
Qass- 
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HISTORICAL ^ - >^ 

SOCIETY 



^^ ^^*. 



MONDAY, THE FIFTH OF JULY, 1897 
EXERCISES IN 

©ommemoratioR ©f fjlojor ©Marfeg forest 

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS MASSACRE 
BY THE INDIANS 

SUNDAY, JUIvY THE FOURTH, 1697 



ELIOT MAINE 



EXERCISES OF 

^^e iflot ^igtorieeif foeiGt^ 

on 
MOiNDAV THE FIFTH OF JULY, 1S97 

COMMEMORATION OF HAJOR CHARLES FROST 

on the 

Two Hundredth Anniversary of his Massacri 

BY THE Indians 

Sunday, July Fourth, i697 



PREFATORY. 



On February 8, of this year, the Eliot Historical 
Society was formed, for the purpose of ascertaining and 
putting in enduring form, the almost forgotten facts of our 
old town's history. 

The first Field Day of the society was on Monday, 
July 5, in honor of Maj. Charles Frost, who was killed 
by Indians, Sunday, July 4, 1697. 

The exercises were on the western slope of Frost's Hill, 
and were attended by about one thousand people, — citizens 
of the town, and descendants of Maj. Frost from various 
parts of the country. 

The following pages contain a complete account of the 
proceedings of the day. 



Eliot, Maine, July, 1897. 



^40G9 



ORDER OF EXERCISES. 

At II o'clock A. M. Concert on the grounds by the 

North Berwick Band. 

At 12 o'clock, Basket I,unch. 



AFTERNOON. 
Exercises of the Eliot Historical Society at two o'clock. 

I. Selection by the Band. 

II. Prayer, by the Chaplain, Rev. Andrew L. Chase. 

III. Singing by the School Children : 

"The Star Spangled Banner." 

IV. Introductory Remarks. Dr. J. L- M. Willis, 

President of the Eliot Historical Society. 

V, Oration. Rev. William Salter, D. D., 

Burlington, Iowa. 

"Two Hundred Years Ago. King Williams War." 

VI. Selection by the Band. 
VII. Poem. Dr. William Hale, Gloucester, Mass. 

"The Hero of Great Hill." 

VIII. Singing by School Children and Audience, 
" America." 



A Procession was formed and proceeded to 
Ambush Rock. 

AT AMBUSH ROCK. 
Singing by the School Children. Keller's Hymn, 

" Angel of Peace." 

II. Address by Francis Keefe, Esq., 

Vice President of the Eliot Historical Society, 

"The Lesson of a Rock." 

III. Unveiling of the Tablet. 

IV. Ode. 

V. Benediction. Rev. William Salter, D. D. 



INVOCATION. 

The Rev'd Axdkew L. Chase, First Congregational Church, Eliot. 

The people assembled at two o'clock. Dr. J. L. M. 
Willis in the chair ; and as the music of the band ceased, 
he requested the Rev'd Andrew L- Chase to lead 
devotional Ij- : 

Mr. Chase's invocation embodied thanksgivings to God 
for the many memories associated with the Fourth of 
July, — the day of our country's Independence,— and the 
patriotism it ever inspires ; for the occasion of interest 
which had brought so many together ; for the revelation 
of God through the beauty of the surrounding nature : 
and for the courage, self-sacrifice and religious principles 
of the early settlers,— especially those whom the service 
commemorated. 

He asked for those assembled, and for all the citizens 
of the town, that lessons of wisdom might be gained from 
the contemplations of valued lives ; and that the exercises 
of the afternoon might inspire the courage to be pioneers 
in the problems of the Present; and to be willing and 
self-forgetful in solving these problems; and that all 
might possess and be guided everywhere by strong and 
wholsome principles. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

Dr. J. L. M. Wn.us, President of Eliot Historical Society. 



We have met to day, to do honor to the 
memory of our most distinguished towns- 
man of former days. To commemorate the 
anniversary of the death of ^Nlaj. Ch.\rle.s 
Frost, which took place two hundred 
years ago, (as the calendar reads,) this 
fourth of July. 

The story of his death is quickly told ; 
but who can adequately tell the story of 
his life with its struggles and triumphs, 
and its influence on the generations whicii 
have followed him? 

It is especially fitting at this time, that 
we take a backward look ; and lay by for a 
little, the all-absorbing Present, as we 
study not merely the record of tragedy and 
struggle, but the grand achievements which 
have made possible the developments of 
today. 

This is why we have organized and are 
sustaining the Eliot Historical Society ; 
and this is why the society has made the 
effort to revive the memory of Maj. Charles 
Frost, who was the most venturesome and 
fearless spirit of his generation. And not 
his life alone, but of the many others, who 
with him did so much to claim the wilder- 
ness for civilization. 

Old Eliot has made many noble pages of 
history, few of which have as yet been 



written. This indeed becomes the office of 
our Society, and we hope to place in 
permanent form these records. 

We are today in the midst of reminders 
of Maj. Frost. The land we are on once 
belonged to him. But a little way down the 
road is the site of his old homestead. 
While just to the north of us, and within 
sound of my voice, on the old trail which 
led from Sturgeon Creek to Newichawan- 
nock, is Ambush Rock where he met his 
death. But a short distance from here, in 
the orchard close by his old home, he lies 
buried. 

Many of his descendants and their 
friends are here to-day, and will visit with 
us these spots. In behalf of the Eliot 
Historical Society, I bid you a most cor- 
dial welcome, hoping the day may prove 
an enjoyable one to you ; and that you may 
go away with a strengthened spirit of 
patriotism, and a greater love for old Eliot. 

We have the good fortune to have with 
us a distinguished descendant of Maj. 
Charles Frost, who will entertain us with 
an address on " King William's War. Two 
Hundred Years Ago." I take great pleas- 
ure in introducing the Orator of the day, — 
the Rev'd Wii.li.vm S.vlter, D. D., of 
Burlington, Iowa. 



AMERICAN COLOxNTIAL HISTORY TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO 

'-'^ * Kimg llJirrieim's llJeir ® ^- 

A DISCOURSE 
IN COMMEHORATION OF MAJOR CHARLES FROST 

Upon the Two Hundredth Anniversary of his Massacre by the Indians 
Sunday, July Fourth, i697 



Delivered bef 



ore the Eliot Historical Society, Eliot, Maine, July Fifth, 1897 
By the Rev'd William Salter, D. D., 

Member of The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Iowa 



AMERICAN COLONIAL HISTORY TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 



The civilization of the world has been 
largely carried forward by colonies that 
have gone from more enlightened to less 
enlightened or to newly discovered lands. 

At the dawn of history the Phoenicians 
were the disseminators of letters and civili- 
zation by the colonies they planted upon 
the shores of the Mediteranean, and by the 
commerce and trade and the alphabet they 
carried with them. Hence sprang up 
philosophy and an in Greece, and law and 
jurisprudence in Italy. In turn, Greece 
and Rome carried civilization to other 
lands. They extended their dominion by 
forceof arms, but by colonies and provin- 
cial establishments they knit distant peoples 
together in the exchanges of commerce ; 
they softened manners ; they ameliorated 
the world. The arts and the language of 
Greece followed the sword of Alexander. 
The laws of Rome followed the conquests of 
Caesar. The largest and fairest city on the 
Rhine by its name (Coin) recalls the fact 
that it was originally a Roman colony. 

Upon the discovery of America, every 
portion of the continent fell under Euro- 
pean domination. For three centuries the 
history of America is an elongation of 
European history, and in no portion in- 
dependent of it until 1776. Colonies from 
the Old World took possession of the New. 
In the course of two centuries, large por- 
tions of America were known as " New 
Spain," or "New France;" a little por- 
tion as " New England." The former 
names have disappeared ; the latter re- 
mains ; and may remain in times afar. 

The discovery of the different parts of 
the continent that form the United States 



WHS made by different nations, by Spain, 
England, France, Holland, and Russia; 
and it covered a period of two centuries 
and a half, from the first sight of Florida 
by Americus Vespucius in 1497 to the dis- 
covery of Alaska by Vitus Bering in 1741. 
As this vast region came to the knowledge 
of successive generations, the natives in 
every part were found to be roving and 
barbarous tribes, at war with one another, 
and, while for a time friendly to the white 
people, sooner or later resisting their pro- 
gress, and making war upon them with the 
tiingle exception of William Penn's colony 
upon the Delaware, the neighboring In- 
dians just before the planting of that 
colony having been badly worsted in their 
wars with other tribes. 

In America for one hundred years after 
its discovery, Spain was the dominant pow- 
er, and held almost exclusive possession. 
There came a change at the beginning of 
the seventeenth century. Then France and 
England began to plant colonies, and a 
struggle arose between them. The struggle 
lasted one hundred and sixty years. 

Samuel Champlain was upon the Saint 
Lawrence at the same time Captain John 
Smith sailed up the James river and made 
the first settlement in Virginia. Five years 
before the Pilgrims set foot upon Plymouth 
Rock, Champlain had set foot upon the 
shores of Lake Huron. When John En- 
dicott, Francis Higginson, John Winthrop, 
John Mason and Ferdinando Gorges were 
founding settlements at Salem, Boston, and 
upon "the Long Reach of the Piscataqua," 
Cardinal Richelieu, Champlain, and opu- 
lent merchants of Paris organized a " Com- 



Two HUNDKKD YEAKS ACIO 



pany of One Hundred Associates," for the 
settlement of Canada ; and at the same 
time a company of Jesuit Fathers landed 
at Quebec. 

The earliest wars were life-and-dcath 
struggles for existence. The red man re- 
garded the white people as intruders, as 
having no right upon the soil but by suf- 
ferance, and, when jealousies and niisun- 
stardings arose, he sought nothing less 
than their extermination. The same diffi- 
culties and misfortunes were encountered 
in all the colonies, and in Canada by the 
French, as in Virginia and Massachusetts 
by the English, and in New York by the 
Dutch. Upon landing in Canada, Cham- 
plain found the Algonquins and Hurons at 
war with the Iroquois, and it was as he 
went on the war-path with the former 
against the latter, that he first saw the 
peaceful lake that perpetuates his name. 
In the scattered villages upon the banks of 
James river in Virginia, three hundred and 
forty-seven persons, men, women and 
children, were killed on a single day, 
(March 22, 1622.) In a second massacre, 
twenty-two years later, there were three 
hundred victims. The wars of the Iroquois 
and Hurons overwhelmed the early Jesuit 
missions in Canada with indescribable 
horrors of torture and massacre. The 
Mohawks were long the terror of New York 
before they buried the tomahawk. Massa- 
chusetts lost nearly a thousand of her sons, 
the flower of the colony, in King Philip's 
war; six hundred houses were burnt; 
scores of women and children were slain. 
The ravages of that war extended to the 
Piscataqua and the Kennebec, where two 
hundred and sixty persons were killed by 
the Indians or carried captive. In 1689 the 
Iroquois burnt LaChine, just above Mon- 
treal, and massacred two hundred people. 

So unsparing of all Europeans were the 
Indians, that it was at one time proposed 
that the French and the English should 
join in common measures for mutual pro- 
tection against Ihem. But the proposition 



miscarried, and afterwards, as the French 
in Canada and the English colonies became 
embroiled in the wars of Europe, the savages 
were eager to take part in every fray, and 
could not be restrained. For the last half 
of the struggle to which I have referred, 
the colonial wars were French and Indian 
wars. They were known among our fath- 
ers mostly by names from over the sea, as 
King William's War (1688-97;) Queen 
Anne's War ( 1704-13 ;)King George's War, 
George II, ( 1744-8 ;) and the Seven Years' 
War (1756-63;) in which France lost 
Canada. 

Two hundred years ago, Europe was in 
hostile camps. In a perspective of that 
time from this distance two names are seen 
at the head of the conflict on their respec- 
tive sides, Louis XIV of France aud Wil- 
liam III of England. They were repres- 
entative men, each of force and weight, but 
opposite in character, of different ideas, 
sentiment!*, manners, and habits, antago- 
nistic in their views of what constitutes a 
State, of what pleases God, of what en- 
nobles life. In their day those two men 
had as much to do in shaping the distiny 
of nations as perhaps any two men have 
had in any period of history. 

At the time referred to (1697,) Louis 
XIV had been upon the throne of France 
forty-six years from his fourtenth year. 
Since Charlemagne no monarch in Europe 
had gained equal renown or power. Of 
stately person and royal air, he called to 
mind the pride, the magnificence, the ab- 
solutism of the Caesars. In pomp and 
pageantry, in gorgeous retinues, in em- 
bellishments of art, in dazzling carousals, 
in extravagant and wanton luxury, his 
court surpassed every other in the annals of 
Europe. It rivalled the fabled glare and 
glory of Babylon and Persia. It had also 
the support and blandishment of the 
philosophers, poets, and wits of the time, 
men of renown, and of the bishops and 
clergy of the realm. France was then the 
wealthiest country in Eurojie, and the king 



TWO HUNDKKD YKARS AGO 



aggrandized that wealth to himself.— 
"Everything in our dominion belongs 
to lis," was his saying. He maintained the 
largest standing army that had been seen in 
Europe for a thousand years, and acted as 
sovereign of the continent. To sustain his 
pride and pomp he laid heavy taxes upon 
the French people, but his expenditures, 
whether in war or peace, exceeded his rev- 
enues, and at his death he left an immense 
debt which a famous scheme, mortgaging 
the wealth of the Indies and the Mississippi, 
was devised to liquidate. It was known as 
the South Sea Bubble. 

Of imperious disposition Louis XIV ac- 
knowledged no rule but his own will. He 
scorned obeisance to any other authority. 
" I am the State," was his motto. He 
ground opposition to the dust. He revoked 
the Edict of Nantes that had given pro- 
tection to protestants, and ran them down 
with the Dragonnades, or drove them from 
France. Of his religion he made a show, 
but it was a matter of pretence and interest, 
and never interfered with his vices, but was 
.such a sanctimonious combination of self- 
assertion with infamous principles a; led a 
leader of opinion in the next century to 
say, '' Ecrazze L' Iiifame." By force of arms 
or by menace and artifice, he intimidated 
surrounding nations. He seized the free 
city of Strasbourg on the Rhine. He joined 
hands with the Sultan, and confederated 
with Mahometans against christians to 
avenge himself upon Austria. When the 
amiable Fenelon chided the king's pride, 
he sent him into disgrace. When Innocent 
XI resisted his aggression and abuse, the 
king was so contumacious and obstinate 
that the Pope supported the coalition 
which Catholic and Protestant princes 
formed against him, headed by the Prince 
of Orange. So long as the Stuarts held the 
throne of England, Louis XIV dominated 
the policy of that country in his interest, 
lie made Charles II and James II his pen- 
sioners and vassals that they might over- 
ride the parliament and people of England. 



He made Charles II believe that it were 
better for him to be "viceroy of the Grand 
Monarch than slave to five hundred of his 
insolent subjects," the English Parliament. 
After the death of Charles II, he offered 
assistance to keep James II on the throne, 
when his subjects were muttering against 
him; and later, when James fled from 
England, he recei\^ed him at his court with 
royal pageantry, and paid him stipends. 
Upon the accession of William, Prince of 
Orange, to the throne, by election of Par- 
liament, and upon his coronation in West- 
minster Abbey, Louis XIV denounced him 
as a usurper, and declared war again.st 
England. 

Two hundred years ago (1697) William 
III was in the ninth year of his reign. 
He had defended himself against the Grand 
Monarch, and now that the war was draw- 
ing to a close, and negotiations for peace 
were in progress he was still defiant, and 
said "that the only way of treating with 
France is with our swords in our hands." 
Finally, a treaty of peace was signed on the 
nth of September, 1697. 

Of the European complications of that 
war it is not my province to speak, except 
that King William's part as the mortal 
enemy of Louis XIV saved not only Eng- 
land, but other nations as well, from falling 
under an arbitrary despotism. In fact it 
was chiefly in view of bringing the help 
and resources of England to break down 
that despotism, that the Prince of Orange 
left his native and Vieloved Holland and 
took the English throne. His heart re- 
mained all his days in Holland, the land of 
his great ancestor, William the Silent. 
The ei)terpri.se he undertook, says Macau- 
lay, "was the most arduou.s and important 
in the history of modern Europe." " It 
saved Europe from Slavery," is the verdict 
of a dispassionate French statesman and 
historian in this century (Guizot). 

To then far-away America King Wil- 
liam's War was of ominous and absorbing 



HUNDRED YEARS AGO 



interest, as it involved the success of our 
father's experiment in planting Liberty 
upon the shores of the new world, and as it 
involved the fate of the struggle to which I 
have referred for the possession of the 
continent. The war, however, was not 
generally known as an American war, or as 
King William's War. In Europe it was 
called the "Grand Alliance," or "the Co- 
alition," because different nations were 
confederate against Louis XIV. In Eng- 
land it was known as the "Revolution;" in 
France and Germany as the "War of the 
Palatinate," because the French troops 
overrun and devoured that Country ; in 
Canada as " Frontenac's war," because 
Frontenac carried it on with resolute and 
remorseless rigor against the colonies. To 
the English colonies it was " King Wil- 
liam's war," because to them King Wil- 
liam was the head and front of the move- 
ment, and because he was the advocate 
and defender of that free spirit by which 
they had been animated from the begin- 
ning, for which they had braved the ocean 
and the wilderness. In the colonies they 
had enjoyed their own institutions of gov- 
ernment, had made their own laws, and 
chosen their own officers. They had sub- 
dued the soil, and had maintained them- 
selves against the savages without help 
from abroad. The mother country had 
looked upon them askance or treated them 
with neglect. Charles II and James II 
had overridden their charters, and imposed 
unworthy and arbitrary men as commis- 
sioners and governors. Connecticut had 
refused to give up its charter and hid it in 
the hollow of an oak. Upon hearing of the 
landing of the Prince of Orange in Eng- 
land, Massachusetts, weary of the misrule 
of Sir Pvdmund Andres, rose in insurrec- 
tion against the royal governor, put him 
in arrest, and reinstated a former governor, 
then in his eighty-five year, the last sur- 
vivor of the founders of the colony. A 
zealot for James II, Andros had seemed to 
act in collusion with Louis XI\" against 



the liberties of Flnglishmen. His govern- 
ment was denounced at the time as a 
" French government," and it became "an 
abomination to posterity," as was foretold 
of it at the time. 

Nowhere was the accession of William 
III received with greater joy than in the 
colonies. It acknowledged their rights and 
liberties, and put an end to the tyranny of 
Andros and the Stuarts. There was never 
before such rejoicing in America. It was 
more hearty and universal than in Eng- 
land, where James had many adherents, 
where a reactionary spirit soon broke out, 
and where it could hardly be forgiven Wil- 
liam that he was a Dutchman. New Eng- 
land had no such prejudice, for Holland 
had given shelter and home to the Pilgrims 
when exiled from their native land, and 
the Dutch people were the original found- 
ers of the colony of New York. 

To Louis XIV the establishment of his 
rule and power in America was an oljjectot 
exceeding interest and desire. He set his 
heart inordinately upon it. He did more 
to make a New France in America than all 
the kings of England ever did for the 
establishment or support of the ICnglish 
colonies. It was in his reign that the 
valley of the Mississippi was discovered, 
and La Salle had named the vast region 
Louisiana in his honor. Canada and Lou- 
isiana were found to be interlaced and 
interlocked. Nature seemed to have 
marked both regions for one country. At 
.several points the portage between the 
waters that flow to the St. Lawrence and 
those that flow to the Mississippi is hardly 
a stone's throw, and in seasons of flood 
those w-aters intermingle. Could Louis 
XIV have conquered the English colonies 
on the Atlantic, the whole continent would 
have been his. New England would have 
been blotted from the map, the St. Law- 
rence, the Mississippi and the Atlantic 
slope w^ould have all alike Ijccome New 
France. 

Aiiiong the friends and courtiers of Louis 



TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO 



XIV was Count Fronlenac, Governor of 
Canada at the time of the discovery of the 
Mississippi, and appointed Governor a 
second time at the beginning of King 
William's war. He was an ardent sympa- 
thizer in the ambitious projects of the 
Grand Monarch, as also in his absolutist 
ideas and arbitrary measures. In ability, 
enterprise, and vigor of character, he was 
superior to any other public man that 
either France or England sent over to 
America. He was eager to do his part 
against the subjects of King William in 
the English colonies, and more than any 
one else he threatened and endangered the 
existence of the colonies. Upon his de- 
parture from France for his second term of 
command, Louis ordered him to conquer 
New York, the blow to be struck at once, 
the English to be taken by surprise. With 
a thousand regulars and six hundred Can- 
adian militia he was to march from Lake 
Champlain to the Hudson, capture Albany, 
seize all boats, and descend to the mouth 
of the river, where two ships of war were 
to join in the capture of New York, then 
containing about two hundred houses and 
four hundred fighting men. All lands in 
the colony, except those of Catholics, were 
to be granted to the French officers and 
soldiers. The other inhabitants were to be 
driven off, the nearest settlements of New 
England to be destroyed, and those more 
remote to be laid under contribution. 

That scheme failed. Frontenac found 
on reaching Quebec that the Iroquois liad 
visited his own province with a frightful 
devastation, that they had massacred two 
hundred of his people, as already stated, in 
a village close to Montreal. Not until 
mid-winter was he able to assume the 
offensive, when he sent out war- parties of 
French and Indians who burnt Schenec- 
tady, and spread dismay and death among 
the frontier towns of New Hanii).shiie and 
Maine. 



At this time Major Charles Frost vi^as 
commander of the military forces of Maine. 
He had come in his early childhood, when 
three or four years old, with his parents 
from the west of England, and had grown 
up with the country among the hardy 
adventurers of the Piscataqua. Of those 
people some hewed the forests, cleared the 
land, and turned the wilderness into 
fruitful fields ; some followed the fishing 
industry; others built ships and engaged 
in commerce and trade. There was work 
for all, and there were willing hands. A 
happy and prosperous condition of things 
existed. There is no happier work than 
opening up a new country. The long 
reaches of the Piscataqua and the indented 
coast of Maine, became "on many accounts 
the most charming part of New England," 
as was said of it at the time (Magnalia ii, 
659.) For forty years the settlers lived 
amicably with the Indians of the region, 
until they were incited in King Philip's 
war to take part in that conspiracy for 
the extermination of the English people. 

Charles Frost had been enrolled a sol- 
dier at sixteen years of age. Both in civil 
and military life he had early gained ad- 
vancement. From his twenty-sixth year 
he had been chosen a representative to 
the General Court of Massachusetts for six 
years. He had been captain of a company 
in King Philip's war under Major Wal- 
dron, who was in command of the Maine 
troops during that war. He had shared in 
its hazards and seen its horrors, and won 
distinction as "fearless, brave and ready." 
He had taken part under Major Waldron 
in the famous strategy by which three 
hundred Indians were captured. The 
measure was a desperate one, and provoked 
a desperate revenge that long rankled in 
the savage breast. 

King William's war was anticipated in 
America before it was formally declared 



T\V(J HUNDRED YEARS AGO 



in liurope. The French in Canada and 
their Indian allies, under the inspiration of 
the Jesuit Fathers, snuffed the battle from 
afar, and entered upon the fray the sum- 
mer before. 

In the first j-ear of King William, soon 
after the news of his coronation had crossed 
the ocean, and had been celebrated in 
Boston with such pageantry as was never 
known there before. Major Waldron was 
murdered by the Indians, by stealth, and 
with cruel torture, in his own house. Upon 
him, after thirteen years, the savages 
wreaked their full measure of revenge. At 
the same time they killed or carried cap- 
tive fifty-two other persons. 

Two months after the death of Major 
Waldron, Charles Frost, who had lost 
favor and standing under Governor Andros,' 
was appointed Major of the Military forces 
of Maine. The Indians and French were 
now spreading desolation far and near. 
Many families abandoned their homes. — 
York, Wells, Portland, Salmon Falls, and 
Durham suffered the extreme horrors of 
savage warfare. Wc spare you any grew- 
some details. The history is of authentic 
record by Belknap and Williamson the his- 
torians of New Hampshire and Maine, and 
by Bancroft, Palfrey, Parkman, and other 
standard authors. Belknap writing more 
than a century ago from his home in the 
very spot where some of those attrocities 
had occurred, took pains to compare the 
published narratives and public records 
with old manuscripts and verbal traditions 
of the sufferers and their descendants. He 
said, " The particular incidents may be 
tedious to strangers, but they will be read 
with avidity by the posterity of those whose 
misfortunes and bravery were so conspic- 
uous." 

At the end of this war the number of 
Englishmen killed on the frontier towns of 
Maine and New Hampshire was more than 
seven hundred ; and two hundred and fifty 
carried captive, many never to return. 

Nor, while the French were the most 



aggressive, was the war only a defensive 
one on the part of the English colonies. 
They captured Acadia, then consisting of 
the eastern part of Maine and of Nova 
vScotia, and they planned to conquer Can- 
ada. Massachusetts fitted out a fleet 
against Quebec, with which New York was 
to join a land force. The latter failed, but 
the fleet reached Quebec, and in the name 
of King William demanded its surrender, 
offering terms of mercy while declaring 
that the French and Indian outrages upon 
New England might justly prompt to a 
severe revenge. Frontenac defiantly re- 
plied that he did not recognize King Wil- 
liam, that the New England people were 
heretics, and traitors to their lawful king, 
James II, that they had taken up with a 
usurper, and made a revolution, but for 
wl'.ich New England and Fiance wouki be 
all one. 

A siege was begun, but after reverses, 
and the small pox brsaking out in the fleet, 
the enterprise was abandoned, and as the 
fleet sailed away Quebec was juljilant, and 
kindled a great bonfire in honor of Fron- 
tenac. While Boston was in humiliation 
and chagrin with the return of the fleet, 
the news went over the ocean, and elated 
Louis XIV, who caused a medal to be 
struck with the inscription : 

FRANCIA IN NOVO OKBE VICTKIX 
KEHECA LIBER.VrA 

MDCXC 

Frontenac wrote to Louis XIV: "The 
King has triumphed by land and by sea. 
Now let him crush the Parliamentarians of 
Boston and the English of New York, and 
secure the whole sea coast with the fish- 
eries of the Grand Bank." 

Later, the colonies were dismayed by 
rumor that a French fleet was hovering 
along the coast, "intending a destroying 
visit" upon New York and Boston. The 
rumor had foundation ; for in the spring of 
1(197 a powerful s<|uatlron was under orders 



lUNDRliD VJT.l RS AGO 



17 



to proceed to the mouth of the Penobscot, 
there to be joined b}' Indian warriors and 
fifteen hundred Canadian troops under 
Frontenac, the whole force to fall upon 
Boston. They had an exact knowledge of 
the town, with a map of the harbor, and 
had prepared a plan of attack. After Bos- 
ton was taken, the land forces, French and 
Indian, were to march on Salem, and 
thence to the Piscataqua, the ships pro- 
ceeding along the coast. The towns were 
to be destroyed, a portion of the plunder to 
be divided among the officers and men, the 
rest to be stowed in ships for transporta- 
tion to France. Frontenac collected men, 
canoes, and supplies for the march across 
the wilderness of Canada and Maine to the 
Penobscot. But the fleet met with deten- 
tion and contrary winds, and the enterprise 
came to nought. 

Meanwhile wary and prowling bands of 
Indians continued to infest the settlements. 
They never fought in the open, but hid in 
thickets or behind logs or rocks, and were 
rarely seen before they did execution. 

On the 15th of March, 1697, th6 Indian 
])rovvlers seized a young mother in Haver- 
hill, Mass:, burnt her home, dashed her 
babe against a tree, and carried her into' 
captivity. ' While they slept one night on 
an island in the Merrimac, she rose upon 
her captors in their slumbers, tomahawked 
them with quick and vigorous blows, and 
made good her escape tlown the river in a 
canoe to her people. This is the story of 
Hannah Dustin, who.se descendants are 
spread over tiie continent. I found one of 
them more than half a century ago among 
the hardy ])ionecrs of Iowa. 

On the loth of June, 1697, a party of 
Indians were discovered near Exeter, N. 
H., lying in ambush, by some women and 
children who had gone into the woods to 
pick strawberries. An alarm was ^iven, 
and the Indians fled after killing one per- 
son and taking another captive. 



On the 4th of July following, then a? this 
year the Lord's Day, Major Frost and two 
others with him fell victims to the merci- 
less savage. It was twenty years since the 
stratagem by which so many Indians had 
been captured at the close of King Philip's 
war, and eight years since the Indians had 
killed Major Waldron. They now wreaked 
their full measure of revenge in killing 
Major Frost. He was in his sixty-fifth year. 
He had been active all his life in military 
service until he was sixty years of age, 
when he was again chosen one of the Gov- 
ernor's Council (1693). By his ceaseless 
vigilance, while other towns were diserted, 
or burnt, and their inhabitants massacred, 
this immediate region of the frontier upon 
the east bank of the Piscataqua had been 
preserved for the most part from savage 
incursions. To the last he continued to be 
employed in a general superintendence of 
military movements. 

Faithful in frequenting public worship, 
according to the law a^d custom of the 
time, and as a magistrate enforcing that 
law, he attended public worship on the day 
mentioned, and it was afterwards remem- 
bered that he expressed a strong desire to 
do so that Sabbath morning. On returning 
home towards evening, a part of his family 
and some neighbors with him w6re fired 
upon by savages who lay in ambush at Am- 
bush Rock. Some of the party in which were 
his two sons (Charles and John) escaped, 
but Major Frost and two others (Mrs. 
Heard and Dennis Downing) were killed, 
and Mr. Heard wounded. 

Thus ended the life of a brave and reso- 
lute man two hundred years ago who did 
his part to opeii the wilderness to civiliza- 
tion, to save the infant settlements from 
utter extinction, and secure to after times 
the immunities and blessings that nmkc 
the homes upon the Piscataqua among the 
happie.it and most favored in the worlil. 
It was through such services and sacrifices 
that our ancestors maintained their foot- 
hold upon the continent, and that in the 



TWO HUNDRED YEARS 



course of time a nation arose, founded not 
upon arbitrary and irresponsible power, not 
upon bigotry and persecution, as repre- 
sented by the Grand Monarch of France, 
but upon liberty and justice and the toler- 
ation of religious differences, as represented 
by William III. 

The Ten Years of King William's War 
were called Dccc/iniiim Luctuosuvi , a Mourn- 
ful Decade, by an annualist of the period. 
He made a record of them "while they 
were fresh and new," end put a detailed 
account of the miseries and sufferings and 
cruelties into his famous Magnalia Christi 
Ameticaiia, ere they should be "lost in 
oblivion." That history closes with an 
improvement of the " Great Calamities of 
a War with Indian-Salvages" in a sermon 
at Boston Lecture, July 27, 1698. The 
preacher said that in the most charming 
part of New England, where men had sown 
fields along the shore for a hundred miles 
together, the fruitful land had been turned 
into barrenness, and aTluster of towns had 
been diminished and brought low through 
oppression, affliction and sorrow. He add- 
ed that no part of the English had been 
more preyed upon at sea during these Ten 
Years than that which had gone out of 
New England. He referred to Major 
Waldron and Major Frost as "two of our 
magistrates treacherously and barbarously 
killed by the Indian murderers," and he 
honors William III as "the greatest mon- 
arch that ever sat on the British throne." 

A few months after that Lecture was de- 
livered in Boston, the foremost enemy of 
the English Colonies, Frontenac, died in 
Canada. He had been the chief agent in 
building up New France, and in extend- 
ing over the vast region which he had aided 
to discover the authority and name of 
Louis XIV. 

In the first half of the next century the 
standards of French authority were set up 
iipon the Great Lakes, at Detroit, Sault 
St. Marie, Mackinaw, and Green Bay, and 



over the Mississippi Valley at Fort Du 
Quesne, Vincennes, Prairie du Chien, 
Kaskaskia, and New Orleans. But finally 
those standards and the whole region (ex- 
cept New Orleans and the territory west of 
the Mississippi which fell to Spain) suc- 
cumbed to British rule with the fall of Can- 
ada on the Heights of Abraham in 1759. 

Meanwhile, though the English Colonies 
had been saved from falling into the hands 
of Louis XIV, other wars followed, and in 
the reverse of history it came about that 
the tables were completely turned. The 
subsequent royal governments of England 
proved oppressive to the colonies, and 
France, their dread and terror in the period 
under review, became seventy-five years 
later their friend and helper against a 
British King who was "unfit to be the 
ruler of a free people " And as in the 
course of events the United States of 
America took a separate and equal place 
among the powers of the earth, France and 
Holland were first and foremost to ac- 
knowledge the independence and welcome 
them into the family of nations. 

The arbitrary rule of Louis XIV went 
down in ignominy and shame in his own 
country in the terror and retribu- 
tion of the French Revolution at the 
close of the eighteenth century, — 
while the ideas and principles of William 
III have become more and more ascendant 
in the counsels of advancing civilization. 

King William was the herald of the new 
age that discredits prerogative and "divine 
right," whether in church or state, and 
makes authority and government respon- 
sible and amenable to the Eternal Justice 
and to the public conscience and the delib- 
erate judgment of mankind. He anticipa- 
ted that entire freedom of religion which is 
the distinctive principle of our American 
national life. A Protestant by original 
conviction, and the head of a Protestant 
kingdom, he favored the abolition of relig- 
ious tests, so that any Protestant, whether 
in the national church or not, might be 



TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO 



19 



admitted to public employment. He was 
a latitudiuarian. He owned different creeds 
and different forms of church government, 
while he preferred his own. It was grate- 
ful to him — England had never such a day 
before or since — when upon his arrival in 
lyondon all religious parties joined to do 
him honor, and eminent nonconformist 
divines inarched in a procession headed by 
the bishop of London. He said he should 
like the Church of England better if its 
rites reminded him less of the rites of the 
Church of Rome, and at the same time he 
was so considerate of the Church of Rome 
that Protestant zealots of the time put his 
charity towards Catholics to his disadvan- 
tage and reproach. It is the verdict of 
Hallam's Constitutional History of Eng- 
land, that he was "the most magnanimous 
and heroic character of that age. Though 
not exempt from errors, it is to his superi- 
ority over all her own natives that England 
is indebted for the preservation of her 
honor and liberty when the Commonwealth 
was never so close to shipwreck, and in 
danger of becoming a province to France. 
It must ever be an honor to the English 
crown that it was worn by him." 

Though our ancestors suffered so severe- 
ly in the Ten Years' War, they were saved 
from falling a prey utterly to the spoiler. 
They appreciated the character and hon- 
ored the name of King William. The 
second college in the colonies was the 
College of William and Mary in Virginia. 
The name William and Mary was given to 
the old castle at the mouth of the Piscata- 
qua, the King having made a present of 
some great guns which were mounted there. 
*■ The fort retained the name for more than a 

century. Appropriately on that very spot, 
which commemorated the English Revolu- 
tion of 1688, occurred the first overt act of 
the American Revolution nearly a century 
later in the capture (Dec. 13-15, 1774) of 
the powder and arms that were stored there, 
which were put to use the next year by the 
patriots at Lexington and Bunker Hill. 



A leading public man of two hundred years 
ago, a President of Harvard College, said 
that if New England could have her 
ancient rights and privileges, she would 
make William III "the emperor of Ameri- 
ca." And so for substance and in moral 
effect it has come about. His principles 
have dominated in America even more than 
England. They have permeated our 
national character. We have moved on 
upon the lines of progress indicated by 
King William. The Declaration of Right 
upon which he took the throne of England 
in 16S9 proceeded upon the same principles 
as our Declaration of Independence in 
1776; and without the former the latter 
had never been. And those principles 
assure the further improvement of the 
world and better laws and better institu- 
tions of government, as the public weal may 
require in the midst of an advancing civil- 
ization and under new conditions of hu- 
man society. 

After two hundred years we behold the 
principles of liberty and constitutional 
government for which King William stood, 
as against the arbitrary principles for 
which Louis XIV stood, incorporated into 
the organic life of the forty-five States of 
the American Union, that have sprung 
from the feeble colonies upon the Atlantic, 
and that now stretch across the continent 
to the Pacific. 

" What change! through pathless wilds no more 
The fierce and naked savage roams; 
Sweet praise along the cultured shore 

Breaks from ten thousand happy homes," 

and the songs of Liberty arise from millions 
and millions of a free and happy people. 

Because in this transformation a crea- 
tive and constructive part fell to the lot of 
Major Charles I>;ro.st, we today bring 
our tribute of honor and veneration to 
his memory. Some of his descendants 
remain near the ancestral home and keep 



Two HUNDRED YEARS ACQ 



lip in tliese ancient seats the watch-fires 
of Liberty and hold forth the torch of 
Truth. Others are scattered over the con- 
tinent and enjoy the frviits of the labors 
and sacrifices that have brought so many 
inestimable blessings to our common coun- 
try. Major Frost left a widow and nine 
children most of whom had families of 
their own. 

His eldest .son Chari.e.s shared in the 
same honors as his father in both military 
and civil life. The Funeral Sermon upon 
his death by Jeremiah Wise, M. A., Pas- 
tor of the Church of Christ in Berwick, was 
published. It gives him the character of 
"a man of great natural abilities, of a 
clear head, of a solid judgment, and of 
considerable attainments in useful learn- 
ing, and so polite that his conversation 
was admired as pleasant and profitable by 
men of letters that had travelled abroad. 
He was a man of religion as well as jus- 
tice ; a devout attendant on God's public 
worship, and in his advanced years con- 
stant to the devotions of family-religion, 
not suffering himself to be diverted from 
it by any occurrent whatsoever." 

John, the 2nd son of Major Charles Frost, 
married Mary, the eldest daughter of Wil- 
liam Pepperell, and sister of vSir William. 
They had seventeen children, of whom 
John was the father of General John 
Fro.st, who served with the Colonial 
troops at the reduction of Canada in 1759, 
and with the Continental troops at Saratoga 
at Burgoyne's surrender. John Frost, 
LL.D., of Philadelphia, the learned and 
voluminous author, was son of General 
John Frost. 



George, another son of John Frost and 
Mary Pepperell, was a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress (1776-9). 

Sarah, another of those seventeen chil- 
dren, was married to the Rev. John Blunt, 
of Newcastle. In addition to those of that 
family of the name of Blunt who served 
their country well was Usher Parsons, 
M. D., who was a surgeon in the navy with 
Commodore Perry at the Battle of Lake 
Erie. The descendants of Major Frost are 
under great obligations to him for his 
memoir of their ancestor published in the 
New England Historical and Genealogical 
Register ( 1849). His Life of Sir William 
Pepperrell is a precious contribution to 
colonial history. 

A complete genealogy of the descendants 
of Major Frost would show a widening in- 
fluence of his life through successive gen- 
erations of those who have perpetuated and 
extended far and wide the principles for 
which he stood "fearless and brave." As 
we are gathered here amid the scenes of 
his devoted and laborious life, and near the 
spot of his tragic fate, and as we recall the 
changes from the wilderness of two centu- 
ries ago to the magnificent inheritances the 
continent now affords seventy millions of 
our countrymen, may some divine inspira- 
tion inflame our hearts with awe and ven- 
eration for the heroic memories of the place 
and the occasion, and enkindle in every 
breast a generous zeal, a public spirit, and 
a religious devotion for the cause of our 
country and mankind, that to those who 
shall come after us another two hundred 
years 

"wf ni.Ty l)e(iueath llie fnme, 
Tlwt the j;rass ^rew hchiiul us when we came." 



THE POEM. 
Dr. Wii,i.rAM Hai,e, Gjw^ucuster, Mass. 



^Ke ^ero of ^reot ^Ifr. 



Inscribed with brave good cheer to 
THE ELIOT (MAINE) HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



THE HKRO OF GREAT HILL. 



"Go, sixteen hundred and ninet3'-seven ! 
Lean from Thy heights, Thou Lord of 

Heaven ! 
Upon our saddened li%^es have heed ; 
Protect us in our hour of need, 
And in Thine own good season bless 
The widow and the fatherless!" 

Thus prayed the people of Kittery, 
Full of anguish and misery, 
When far and wide the news was spread. 
That Major Frost of Great Hill lay dead; 
And that the Indians once more 
With terror filled the Quamphegan shore. 

Never, since with his followers rash 
Searching our shores for sassafras 
Came thst marauder, Martin Pring, 
Hath there happened a bloodier thing 
Between settler and settled, red and white, 
Skirmish or fray or open fight, 
111 all the fair Quamphegan vale 
Than that which is told in this sad tale. 
lietween red man and while man nothing 

worse 
Do the horrid Indian wars rehearse, 
Tlian that which befell one fair Lord's day 
Un the banks of the proud Piscataqua. 

Since our great grandsire, the Black Prince, 
Fought with the Frenchmen inch by inch, 
Oil Cres.sey, Poictiers and Agincourt, 
And other red fields "holding the fort ;" 
Since the blunt days of Bunker Hill 
That make a Yankee's blood boil still ; 
Since Bull Run, Shiloh, and Gettysburg, 
( b'oul is war's hell on beach or berg) ; 
Since P'ort Fisher and Colonel Shaw, 
Who himself enslaved in slavery's war; 
Since Barbara Frietchie and "Stonewall" 

met 
To prove that heroes are living yet. 
Pluck is man's proudest heritage, 
'i he grandest heirloom of any age. 



There's a halo around a hero's name 

That puts a coronet to shame ; 

There's something in a good man's face, 

However poor, that gives it grace ; 

There's something in a brave man's gaze 

That all the pride of courts outweighs ; 

And grander is an honest name 

Than tarnished tinsel of rank and fame: 

Just as the rose at sunset's hush. 

Puts tawdry court splendor to the blush. 

Beautiful it was that summer morn, 
When in the cool of the early dawn. 
Leaving wife and babes at his cottage door. 
Whom, alas, he should see no more. 
Major Frost his stout steed bestrode, 
And, winding along the river road. 
Went to meeting, this man of war, 
In Quamphegan, up the Piscataqua. 
Not as one now goes in these fair days 
Went the Major his God to praise. 
But with trusty musket and pistols true, 
A powder horn and a knife or two 
Stuck in belt and boots, and saddk-bags 
That the weight of bullets sorely sags. 
Thus, ready for fight or prayer, rode he 
At the head of a little company 
Of godly folk that no foe could make 
Their Lord and his holy house forsake. 
Braving the forest and the foe, 
As conscience bade them did they go, 
Come feast or famine, good or ill. 
The soul's deep longing by prayer to fill. 

Dreary and sad that awful year : 
It was a time of want and fear. 
The famine and fighting and winter's cold 
Had made the desperate savage bold ; 
As winter dragged slowly into spring 
He grew an accursed and evil thing ; 
And a thousand devils seemed to lurk 
In the red man's heart and the red man's 
dirk. 



HERO OF GREAT HILL 



Yet blithely that morning, from Sturgeon 

Creke 
To old Quamphegan, his Lord to seek, 
The Major went. He often smiled, 
As if he spake to his todlin' child ; 
His face was calm as a Quaker's ; but 
Through his keen gray ej^es, half shut, 
He swiftly glanced to left and right, 
As a desperate gladiator might. 
If a twig but snapped or acorn fell, 
Or a fox rushed wildly down the dell, 
He knew it, and in the saddle turned 
As if some foeman he discerned. 
Reined in his horse, and cautious felt 
The weapons in his leathern belt; 
While his sinewy, nervous fingers played 
With pistol-butt and with gleaming blade. 

" Aye, troublous times, upon my word !" 
Quoth he, turning to Mistress Heard ; 
"The redskins are near, and the coppery 

thieves 
Are as thick as yonder copse's leaves. 
Hist ! do ye hear that whip-poor-will, 
Down there behind the old grist-mill ? 
' I'was never a bird that made that note; 
It came from a skulking redskin's throat! 
The valley is full of them, far and wide, 
I see their traces on every side: 
There's a feeling I cannot drive away, — 
Methinks there'll be trouble here today !" 

" Fie on you. Major !" the goodwife said, 
" What's got into your foolish head? 
Things looked dark this spring, I know. 
But the redskins have melted with the snow : 
From Quochecho to Saco's falls 
On war-path red no savage calls; 
The genial summer is with ns now, 
Pray wipe that scowl from off thy brow !" 

Upspake brave Dennis Downing then. 

First of the Major's chosen men. 

Riding along at his leaders side, 

With a conscious air of honest pride, — 

" What think ye, good woman, are we such 

fools 
That naught we learn in the redman's 

schools? 



There's never a trick that these tawnies try 
But we can knock them all skj'-high !" 

And the Major, leaning on saddle-bow, 
Loudly laughed, "Downing is right, I trow. 
These idle, mawkish, woman's fears 
Hardly become one of my years." 

So with loud laugh and deep-lunged jest 
On to meeting they bravely pres.sed. 
Where the Newichawannock foaming falls, 
While the salmon strikes and the fish-hawk 

calls. 
And leaps to the unbridged Piscataqua 
Through its bridal-veil of flying spray. 

" You know, father," said his strapping lad 
Who rode behind, "the tawnies are mad 
Since we thrashed 'em in that wholesale 

way 
On Oyster River and up Great Bay. 
You remem'oer what Noah Emery said," 
(He went on, shaking his curlj^ head,) 
"At Goodman Shapleigh's the other night; 
He said he heard a terrible sight 
Of crackling of sticks, and sighs and groans 
And rattling as of dead men's bones. 
As he went for his colt in the heater-piece ; 
All of a sudden these sounds did cease ; 
Then a whistle from under the hemlock 

trees 
Made all the blood in his body freeze. 
'Twas witches, or injuns, cr the evil one. 
For devil and redskin are as one." 

"Ho, ho, my sapling!" doth the Major 

laugh, 
"Are ye a man to let such chaff 
Scare ye stark mad ?" And he whistled 

his dog 
That whined and sniffed by a beechen log. 
And thus the little cavalcade 
Its pious way to meeting made. 

The parson was at his best that day ; 
All hearts were touched by his earnest way. 
His mellow voice with fervor shook 
As leaning o'er the sacred Book 



24 



THE HERO OF GREA1 



He besought his llock from strife to cease, 
For his theme (like ours today) was peace. 
His " Peace on earth, good will to men," 
Was followed by niauj- a deep "Amen" 
From pew and aisle. And then at last. 
The i-ermon ended, came the repast 
On the church steps, or under the trees, 
Where gathered to catch the summer breeze 
The good folk loved to linger long 
For story, gossip, jest and song. 
For the church then was a Parliament, — 
House of Lord and man together blent, — 
Where one might tarry and hear discussed 
All topics pertaining to mortal dust. 
As well as those celestial themes, 
The creatures of our bravest dreams. 
And so it was late when the Major said 
Good-night to the parson, and at the head 
Of his faithful, fearless, little band 
In clarion tones gave the command. 
And started away on his fatal ride, 
Nor dreamed that Death his horse sat 

astride. 
Now it chanced that, waiting to see them 

pass, 
A sorrowful woman sighed "Alas !" 
And a timid maid on the edge of the crowd 
Wrung her white hands and sobbed aloud : 
" To look at the Major makes nie afraid ! 
He looks like the Lord by Jude betrayed." 
The Major heard and bit his lip. 
Bowed low to all, and as his whip 
Fell on his horse's flank, replied : 
" The Lord is good, his mercy wide ! 
Gootl friends, I thank ye for your prayers; 
Put calm your iniiuls ami dismiss your 

cares ; 
I fear no foe that ever fought. 
No weapon that ever mo.nal wrought ; 
Who crosses my path does so indeed 
At his peril, and liad best have heed : 
May my old musket never rust 
Till every savage has bit the dust ; 
I'll defeiul my folk at any cost. 
For my blooil is //i'/ though \\\y name be 

Frost!" 
So, slriikiiig liis steed, he said "good-day," 
And grandl.v, solemnly, roile a\va\-, 



As martyr might to the cruel stake, 
Giving his life for conscience' sake. 

" Ah me !" quoth the parson, "it grieves 

me sore 
That our guest goes sadly from our door ; 
I never saw him so stern and grave ; 
How piteous that last glance he gave! 
Whether our lives pass swift or slow. 
Heaven lies nearer than we know. 
I hope no danger our friends have run, — 
The Lord is gracious. His will be done. 
May they find peace on this Sabbath Daj% 
The Lord be with them — let us pray !" 

God bless the Reverend Jerry Wise ! 
Our keen, blunt Pilot of the Skies. 
No dearer name than his shall be 
E'er lisped by lip in Kittery ; 
Above the roaring river's falls, 
Saintly and sweet his voice yet calls. 
Well was he named who wise-Xy '.aught 
The soul the thorny way it sought. 
Brave Jeremiah Wise, — well done. 
Servant of God ! the victory's won ! 

How swiftly direful news is rolled ! 

How soon a tale of blood is told ! 

Scarce had the eagle, seeking rest, 

His proud flight curved to shelt'ring nest, 

Scarce had the heron, at 'proach of night. 

Over the river w-inged its flight. 

Sending afar its wierd lone cry, 

As dervishes for them that die, 

Scarce aglow were the meadows damp 

W'ith the firefly's incandescent lamp, 

Scarce over the misty river bank 

In bed of blood the sun slow sank. 

When, as if from hell's mad sea of flame. 

This news unto Quamphegan came : 

" The foe is upon us — all is lost 1 

The tawnies have butchered Major Frost !" 

Then swift and sure the dread news flew. 

Too fleet to be checked, too sad to be true. 

How the Major's party without harm 

Had reached the confines of his farm. 

And with their happy homes in sight, 



THE HERO OF GREAT Hill 



25 



Each fond heart throbbed with love and 

light ; 
How the Major, uttering his last word, 
Said proudly, turning to Mistress Heard, 
" Praise God, good friends, we're home 

again !" 
While his faithful followers cried "a»ien." 
When, without so much as a warning breath, 
Like hell-hounds from the jaws of death. 
The savages leaped from behind a rock. 
And gave tbe great leader his death-shock ; 
How the Major fell with never a word, 
And Dennis Downing ; but Mistress Heard, 
Mortally wounded, from pillion prone 
Fell to the earth, and with dying groan 
To her husband turning, said: "I die! 
For the children's sake leave me and fly!" 

That night, before the dawn of day, 
The Major was laid in his grave away 
On this gentle knoll, where the apple-trees 
Dapple the meadow and scent the breeze. 
But not to rest, for the wily foe 
For the hated pale chief lying low, 
Snatched his body before 'twas cold. 
And bore it to the hilltop bold. 
Where in the morning light it hung. 
The ghastliest sight by sage e'er sung, 
A grewsome Christ on its cross of woe, 
Grinning grimly on the town below. 
"Ho, Yengee Sachem!" the red skins 

yelled, 
" Your last fight is fought, your last feast 

held ! 
We who Walderne of Quocheco slew. 
And Roger Plaisted, now slay Frost, too ! 
The white Sagamore will kiss no more 
His While Faw7i squaw in cabin-door ; 
No more will he hunt the red man down, 
No more will he burn his wigwam brown. 
Whomever the red man hath for foes 
To his happy Hunting Groundswift goes!" 
So went the Major as martyrs go 
Straight from God's mansion here below 
To the house above, where bravely wait 
The sweet, the lowly, the truly great. 
Poor Mistress Frost, bowed low wi th grief. 
Unto her Lord turned for relief : 



" Hath a merciful Lord brought this to 

pass? 
I live no longer! alas! alas! 
My days are full of misery, — 
God pity me! God pity me! 
Open, Heaven, and let me go 
To him, my all, above or below!" 
To which a good woman with tear-dimmed 

eye. 
Kissed the widowed one, and made reply: 
" The good Lord keepe our troubled ways, 
And sanctify to our perreles days 
His dispensations that smite 
Like lightning on the cave of night." 

Dark, baleful days for Kittery, 
And the Province to utmost boundary. 
Each goodman's heart was full of fears. 
And every goodwife's full of tears. 

Red skin and pale face are now as one : 

The feud's forgot, the race is run. 

No longer the stake and ambuscade 

Strike terror to Christian man and maid ; 

No longer the goodmanwith babes and wife 

Hastes to the garrison for life ; 

No longer our river the birch canoe 

Paints with its tawny, ochred crew ; 

No longer the Indians our wood-ways stalk 

With cruel arrow and tomahawk ; 

No more doth you peaceful, sun-kissed hill 

Our souls with anguish and horror fill 

At sight of that stark corpse looking down. 

Ghastly and scalpless, upon the town, 

A new-world Christ on his Calvary 

Impaled for love and liberty. 

No longer the savage (God be praised !) 
Is slain like the ox, his wigwam razed ; 
No more the warrior by boot and spur 
Is kicked and cursed like a mongrel cur; 
No more the haughty, untamed brave 
Is led to the shambles and sold as slave, 
Th' imperious lord of creation sold 
For pale-face wampum, damned gold. 
Dragged from his home, his council fires, 
The heritage of hoary sires ; 
No more the squaw, with poor pappoose, 
Is into the forest wilds turned loose. 
The trembling prey of wolf and bear, 



And the screaming scavengers of the air. 

Now, in the voice of pine and spruce. 

The Great Spirit hath called truce. 

Red man and white man rest side by side 

In the Almighty's graveyard wide. 

Now, in death's calm, untroubled sleep, 

The Lord of all doth his brave ones keep. 

Sleep well, great souls, and know no fear, 

With all ye love and hold most dear ; 

Soon to the Happy Hunting Ground 

Ye bravely go, when the trump shall sound 

Side by side in a common bed. 

They sleep, the white man and the red. 

Honor and censure to both belonj. 

For each was right and each was wrong. 

God grant their spirits in sweet release. 

To smoke forever the pipe of peace I 

We are the People of the Pine. 
Our rugged state is a power divine ; 
An homely Yankee paradise 
Of the bravest hearts beneath God's skies ; 
And every brave home hath its Eve, 
And its apple, too, we may well believe. 
Better these homely farms of ours 
Than serf-tilled acres and lordly towers : 
Better these free hearts stout and true. 
That beat for the good that they can do. 
That battle not with sword and shield. 
But marshalled on a bloodless field. 
Live to fulfil the Master's plan. 
And draw man nearer unto man. 
'Tis brave earth holds a hero's bones, 
Holy his lone grave's lichened stones ; 
Sacred the dust where a brave man lies. 
Shall we not, Sons of the White Christ, rise. 
Rise to his height superb, and claim 
All men as brothers, /// /fis Xanir.' 
Knowing, whatever the skin may be. 
The high, the lowly, the bond, the free. 
Only that soul is white that brings 
Blessi;ig to others, to all .souls sings. 
Beneath its tenement of clay 
The white soul bides that shall live for aye, 
A spirit transfigured by faith, love, prayer. 
To be with the White Christ joint-heir. 
Here was his home bv vouder hill ; 



His name its proud height beareth still. 
But rather Hero's Hill, think we. 
The grander, prouder name would be. 
And thus with our hero face to face. 
We christen his hallowed resting-place. 
Here was his dark Gethsemane, 
And there his gory Calvary. 
Honor to him forevermore. 
This hero of an hero-shore ! 
This new-time Saviour ; who gave 
Himself his snffering world to save; 
Who grandly lived, as one deified, 
Yet lived not grander than he died. 

Who gotten of love comes to earth's estate 

Hath conception immaculate; 

Who daily, grandly, godlike lives 

Himself divinity truly is ; 

Who bravely for another dies 

Ls ever a Christ in angel-eyes ; 

His Master's name may he not take 

Who gives himself for his Master's sake? 

This vale was his black Gethsemane, 

Yon hill his bloody Calvary ; 

Blessed be this Saviour, who died that we 

Might henceforth saved and blessed be ! 

The last of that grand triumvirate. 
Unflinching martyrs of a common fate, 
Waldrou and Plaistcd and Frost, these three. 
The flower of New England chivalry! 
All honor be theirs! And let us raise 
Unto these heroes of bygone days 
Tablet and stone and monument. 
Nor think we, friends, our means ill-spent 
H, in honoring the dead, ourselves we raise. 
And our children's children to grander 
ways. 

Guard your good name at any cost. 
Ye men who bear the name of Frost! 
F^rost, Fernald, Shapleigh, Downing, 

Heard,— 
A nugget of gold is every word ! 
Blush, town, with pride! Such names as 

these, 
Yoiced by billow and bird and breeze. 
Are a richer dower, a costlier crown. 
Than :inv that kings have handed down! 



THE HERO or GREAT HILI. 



27 



They stand for homes that reach God's 

skies, 
Of happy hearts the paradise ; 
They stand for men that are brave and free, 
They stand for souls that kingly be. 

Here dwelt one who with magician's wand, 
(Saintly in soul, impish in hand,) 
Harnessed the thunderbolt, and made 
It slave of every art and trade, 
As with bronzed brow and sweatj^ locks 
Yon farmer yokes the patient ox. 

Here, gracious, loving, sweet, abode 
In Bittersweet beside yon road, 
One whose deep love each glad year yields 
An incense sweeter than the fields. 
Though living from the world apart, 
A port of refuge was her heart. 
And every little storm-tossed waif. 
Harbored in her great heart was safe. 
Thank God, from sin and want and shame, 
In that Home builded In His Name. 
IJecause her own lamb the Shepherd took. 
She herself assumed the Shepherd's crook. 
Uf deathless memory is she 
To name whom, pausing reverently, 
"Dear Mother Rosemary!" we say, 
Then braver, better, go our way. 

But still from Heaven her sweet voice calls; 
On her beloved yet gently falls 
The mantle of her love and prayer. 
As if filled with diviner air. 
There moves today among us one 
Whose mission, glorious as the sun, 
Touches with gold all hearts, and makes 
Each home a Greenacre ; and breaks 
Devoutly, in the Christ's sweet stead. 
For all who will, the Living Bread. 
" Peace on earth, good will to men," 
The watchword of her heart and pen. 
Serene, divine, her rare philosophy : 
Serener and diviner, she. 

Today a healer with us walks, 
Companion of our thoughts, our talks. 



Beloved physician, whose kindly speech 
Is more than bolus huge, or leech , 
More potent his contagious cheer 
Than physic, reaching far and near. 
Casting out devils of dismay, 
Turning fear to joy, and night to day. 
Bidding the well be glad and brave. 
The sick to triumph o'er the grave. 
Ministering alone for the sweet sake 
Of Him who Bread of Life once break, 
Now praised, now damned, as good men be. 
The weary rounds all patiently 
He faithful plods, to blame or praise 
Alike indifferent, through nights and days. 
Mindful of one whose life alone 
Seems the fair pattern for his own. 
The loved disciple in truth is he 
Of Him who healed in Galilee, 
And blessed the holy marriage feast 
With miracle, God's great High Priest, 
The lame , the halt, the blind swift healed 
By God's great love in Him revealed. 
The leper cleansed, raised widow's son, 
To say at last, " Thy will be done." 
And such the magic of his smile 
That as he jogs each dusty mile 
His wondrous epidemic spreads, 
As rainbows do, to hearts and heads. 
And jocund health his "sorrel" tags. 
And mirth drips from his saddle-bags ; 
While joy spreads swift from heart to heart. 
And makes all flesh blessed by his art. 

Here WhiTTIer came, a grateful guest, 
To find for mind and soul sweet rest, 
And on Piscataqua's proud shore 
See the Great Spirit smile once more. 
And with him came that gentle pair 
Whose names we breathe as if in prayer. 
The sharers of his blood and fame. 
At every hearth of honored name. 
Whose beauteous home, to him oped wide, 
Was Heaven itself, personified. 

Blush honest hearts with conscious pride, 
Whose sires as heroes lived and died ! 
Yours is man's goodliest heritage 



THE HERO OF GREAT HILI, 



On hoary history's blood-stained page, — 
The dower of courage, love and light, 
Making men equal in God's sight. 

Aye, blush, ye men of Eliot, 

Whose 'scutcheon rude hath no foul blot ! 

Like him whose honored name ye bear. 

Be ye, too, sober, brave and fair. 

Like that apostle Jehovah sent 

Unto the Indian, in brave content 

Do ye your days with sweetness fill. 

Working, all humbly, the Master's will. 

Broader than Eliot's, not more brave. 

Your lives shall reach beyond earth's grave. 

Press on, brave hearts, nor strivings cease ! 

Beget a Brothethood of Peace. 

Till over every star and world 

Love's banner fair is wide unfurled. 

No less apostles here today 

We fight the fight and go our way; 

Nor will our mission ended be 

Till every land and race is free. 

Shall we, brave souls, rest here at ease 

While suffer sister-nations over seas? 

Are we content to sit at feast 

While sups that "Sick man of the East," 

Incarnate hell, off Armenia's bones. 

And filleth as with travail-groans 

This world of ours? Nay, God forbid ! 

Arise ! The world from sin swift rid. 

And let us give, as heroes do. 

Not prayer alone, but powder, too. 

Our might no grander cause may seek 

Than, rising, to out-Greek the Greek, 

And help poor Hellas in her fight 

'Gainst Turkish tyranny for right. 

Our "liberty" something slavish means, 

When over seas the Phillipines 

Send vainly their request for aid. 

Shall we hold back aghast, afraid ? 

Nay, nay, brave freemen — God forbid ! 

Not till the world of sin is rid. 

Not worthy freemen shall we be 

Until 0117- freedom doth Cuba free ! 

Cursed be the man that cowers and shrinks. 

And like a whipped whelp whines and 

slinks ! 
Cursed be that land forever more 
That hides a tyrant on its shore ! 
Hail! Freedom's first and fairest child. 
With banner white and undefiled. 
Shall we strike sail and spike the gun ? 
Nay, God forbid ! Not till life is done. 



And every shore and soul shall be 
As we today, thank God, free, free! 
Hail, proudest land beneath the skies ! 
Columbia, Freedom's paradise. 

Hamlet of brave hearts! Eliot men! 
Vain were tribute of tongue or pen 
Were it not for the spirit that over broods 
Our fretful lives, our changeful moods, 
And bids us in a voice scarce heard, 
To rise above the beast and bird. 
And putting off the cloging clay 
Seek serener levels day by day. 
Like the greatest Sachem and Sagamore 
That ever dwelt on our rugged shore, 
The grandest spirit e'er forest hid, — 
The Indian prophet, St. Aspenquid. 
The good old chief, about to die. 
Gathered his people far and nigh 
To his home on Agamenticus, 
The death-feast spread, and addressed 
them thus : 

" My people live at peace with all ; 
Love white man! White man's God is tall. 
Bury the hatchet ; from discord cease , 
With Great Spirit smoke pipe of peace." 

So we, like Aspenquid of old, 
(Forgive, nor deem ns overbold,) 
So we stand with ye here today. 
And sing our song and go our way. 
Like ships that pass at night we be. 
Steadfastly faring o'er life's sea. 
We signal, greet, and parting cheer. 
As each barque to its course doth veer, 
"All's well! All's well! Where bound ? 

Where bound ?" 
Till, hull-down, silence answers sound. 
So we who may not here remain. 
Nor look, perchance, dear friends, again 
Into your kindly faces, give God-speed, 
Imploring Him whose love doth heed 
Even the sparrow's fall, to let 
His light shine on us, Homeward set. 
We spread for ye the feast, and bid 
Ye welcome, like good Aspenquid. 
The death-feast this ; and this fair earth 
Death's charnel-house. But lo ! new birth 
Avvaiteth us ! Thank God, at last. 
When all is o'er, earth's poor repast 
The soul's birth-feast shall prove ; and we 
Like Aspenquid, in victory 
Know the Great Spirit as He is, 
His life our life, and ours His. 



Valley of brave men, heed ! attend ! 
Mark well these words — ^the tale doth end. 



AT AMBUSH ROCK. 
UNVEILING OF THE TABLET. 



^igtori® %®Sg. 



Francis Keefb, Esq., 
First Vice President of The Eliot Historical Society. 



HISTORIC ROCKS. 



Ml. rrtsiilcnl .and Friends: 

It would be strangely interesting if all 
the legends of Rocks could be gathered 
into a volume. Rocks are centres of His- 
tory. Even legends become historic. 

The Hebrew Jacob evidently believed in 
the " Testimony of the Rocks," for he used 
one for his pillow and saw the skies divide 
in his dreams. He made a rock, too, a 
"pillar of witness" and benediction; and 
he called it Mizpah, — a name that from him 
has been adopted as one of the sacred 
words, and is in common use to-day. 

That strangely occult man, Moses, — 
educated among the Egyptians, familiar 
with the lore of an age that has hardly been 
excelled, — saw, pent up in a cliff at Horeb, 
a spring of water, to meet an intense need. 
For aught we know that spring pours forth 
its stream to-day. 

Later still, in Roman history, we see 
Tarpeia. the vestal virgin, dazzled by the 
jewels of the Sabines. When told to open 
her father's city-gates, and promised that 
she should have all they wore upon their 
left arms, the fascinated woman unbolted 
the bars. Surely they kept their word. 
She was crushed by the weight of their 
shields which they heaped upon her. To 
this hour that rock of fate is called by her 
name, — the Tarpeian Rock, and has its 
pilgrims. 

We wander about England and France 
to see the old Cromlechs of the Druids ; 
strange, weird, vague, as if haunted by the 
bards and vates of that mysterious people. 

We go into Westminster Abbey and sit 
in the Coronation Chair which has for its 
cushion an old boulder on which for cen- 
turies the line of Kings and Queens, — even 
Her Majesty, Victoria, — have been seated 
to be crowned. And we are told that it 
was the veritable Jacob. s pillow of vision 



and beauty. Whether we believe it or not, 
we seek the old oaken throne and sit upon 
the rock. 

Lesser rocks have their associations. 
Every town has some old boulder covered 
with poetic fancy or stern historic fact. 

Across the valley from where we stand is 
the rock on which the sedate and quiet 
people of our town used to alight from their 
horses at the door of the little Quaker 
meeting-house. 

Dr. Hale, our Poet to-day, has a song of 
a Heart-break rock in the old Massachu- 
setts town of Ipswich, re-telling a quaint 
and yet pathetic Indian legend. 

Singularly enough most of these varied 
fancies and facts are asssociated with war- 
fare, victory, massacre, terror, distress, 
brutality, or leaps to success iu life. 

In all ages, men and women have fled to 
Rocks for shelter; hence even a boulder 
means strength to us. 

The old Rock at Plymouth gives strength 
to the soles of Pilgrim feet as they step 
upon its solidity. 

To-day we stand beside all that remains 
of a once huge and really a double boulder. 
Behind it stood the red man, the native of 
the soil, whose well-aimed gun brought the 
stern, relentless, determined old warrior, — 
Major Ch.\rles Frost, — to the ground. 

Our exercises have commemorated this 
Soldier and the Englishmen of his day. 
But, at the rock where he fell, we glance 
for a moment at the Wild Man who stood 
behind it; the arm that pointed the gun, 
and brought low the sturdiest dweller of 
the Piscataqua. 

The Indian is a study. The more we 
study him, the better we like him. We find 
in him the wonderful gifts, powers, abilities 
and aspirations of most veritable manhood ; 
the qualities which stem the most revolting 



AT AMBUSH ROCK 



and inhuman, as we review them, would 
— rightly evolved — have made him a noble 
creature. 

We never cease to hear about the spirit of 
revenge, which is actually a tinge of Indian 
blood. It gives us the impression of the 
venom of cruelty and savageuess. Is it so? 

Revenge really is that keen sense of 
Justice that found its earliest breath in the 
mind of God Justice is never anything 
but Divine Revenge only needed to be 
re-channeled in the red man's brain, and it 
would have been a poise of peculiar quiet- 
ness and thought which kts anj' deed woik 
out its recompense. 

Nobody took a more wholsome and true 
interest in the Indian than John Eliot who 
lived contenip(iraneou?-ly with M j.>r Frost. 
"I most desire," said Eliot, "to communi- 
cate unto the Indians in their owne lan- 
guage." And "wee shall have sundry of 
them able to read and write every man for 
himselfe" and this "the Indians do much 
also desire." 

Eliot's books in the Algonquin tongue 
were printed in editions of a thousand 
copies. 

Let us take Cotton Mather's thought of 
the tribes. He was a more renowned schol- 
ar than Eliot. He regarded the Indian as 
on the plane of tigers ; and he wrote : 

" Tho there were enough of the Dog \n 
their temper, there can scarce be found an 
.^ in their language." 

"Their Alphabet be short, but their 
Words are long enough to tire the patience 
of any scholar in the World." 

John Eliot saw the inttllect and ingen- 

iousness of the Indian. Cotton Mather saw 

the dog of them, and the long words. It is 

^ just as we fix our eyeglass, — spirit or brute, 

angel or demon. 

John Eliot thought the Indian words had 
the breath of the Hebrew in them. Cotton 
Mather found an Indian who was what we 
should call "mediumistic." He called him 
a "possessed man." Mather read to his 
"demon" out of the Hebrew Bible, to test 



Eliot's assertion. Alas ! the said "demon" 
could not undersiand a syllable of Hebrew, 
a sure proof. Cotton Mather said, that our 
Indians were in no sense allied to the "cho- 
sen people." 

But we have only to read our own Pis- 
cataqua Sagamore's soulful plea for his 
people to get a glimpse of an Indian's 
heart and brain. The old Sagamore, — the 
last of the Piscataqua Sagamore's, went by 
the name of KnoUes, — Hansard Knolles. 
H.)w he got this English cognomen we 
never may know, and it matters not. But 
this we perceive, he was a true lover of his 
country and his men ; and a nobleman of 
Nature's own moulding. When he was 
dying of old age, he sent for the men of our 
Kitttr}' to meet him at Berwick, and his 
plea was : 

" Through all these plantations are rights 
of my children. I am forced to humbly 
requi.'St a few acres of land to be marked out 
for them and recorded as a public act in the 
Town books, so that when I am gone they 
may not be perishing beggars in the pleas- 
ant places of iheir birth. 

" A great war will shortly break out be- 
tween the white men and the Indians. At 
first the Indians will prevail ; but they 
will finally be rooted out and utterly des- 
troyed !" 

It was an anxious looking forth for the 
fate of his people,— a strangely keen intui- 
tion of the Sagamore. 

Ten years before Knolles gave expression 
to the foregoing, the ruler aud Powwow on 
the Merrimac, gave as "the last words of a 
Father," — 

" The White Men are Sons of the Morn- 
ing. Sure as you light the fires, the breath 
of heaven will turn the flames upon you." 

With the word from our old Sagamore's 
lips, let us turn to 

AMBUSH ROCK 
behind which the red men who had seen 



Knolles lace to face, and who had given 
him the homage his position required, 
secreted themselves. We may wish that 
the wild man had witheld his gun and 
arrow ; but we will remember this : What 
hedidonjulj' 4, J697, and why he made 
this boulder historic, was his native relish 
for these hills and valleys, — the grand, 
deep forests and river. 

Major Charles Frost was a man born 
to achieve. He recognized no impedi- 
ment. He hesitated not for life or death. 
We honor him as a man of iron will, — and 
we have Written his Name in Marble 
where he fell : 

Two centuries later we read the young 
stalwart red-faced warrior in clearer char- 
acters ; and we give him, also, a place in 
our estimate and respect. 

Ambush Rock from this day will be a 



more notable historic memory. We give 
out anew its legends to this and all other 
generations. It is a glory to our Eliot; 
we feel the pulse of strength to be near it. 

If the voice of the red man who aimed his 
gun at the brow of Major Frost could re- 
echo today, it would utter, even as we do, 
"God and my Native Land!" 

Who knows but the red man and white 
man in the realms beyond, are in close 
affinity ; and have learned to understand 
each other better, as we do here ? 

True light shall shine. 

And in the end 
Comes recompense 

For foe and friend. 

And wt ennobled 

By their thought. 
Grow wiser by 

What others wrought. 



Hniunling uf tl;c ClIablBi 



The tablet of marble inserted in Ambush 
Rock was covered with the American Flag. 
As the speaker (Mr. Keefe,) alluded to the 
historic spot and its memorial slab, the 
Flag was removed, — the 

Tablet Unveiled 
'')■ 
Master EDWARD L. FROST, 
son of Mr. Charles Frost, of Eliot, — who 
is a lineal descendant of the hero and mar- 
tyr of 1697. 



INSCRIPTION. 

AMBUSH ROCK. 

— o — 

Major Charles Frost, 

Mrs. John Heard, Dennis Downing, 

Killed by Indians on this spot 

July 4, 1697. 

— o — 

Marked by Citizens 

of Eliot, 

July 4, 1897. 



AT AMBUSH ROCK 



33 



ODE. 

Augustine Caldwell. 
Sung at Ambush Rock. Air, — "Auld Lang Syne." 

One noble life inspires an age . 

One brave heart, far and strong 
Entwines its powers ; its influence sheds 

In word and work and song. 

Heroic deeds, the strength of arm, 

Firmness of faith and zest. 
Are atmospheres of life and health, — 

Reveal man at his best. 

Here we recall one fearless soul; 

A steady step and sure; 
We honor all his sturdy ways, — 

The name, the rank he bore ; 

But— sword nor bayonet to lay ! 

Nor bullet, shot nor shell ! 
In clearer brain and purer light 

Reasoi and Love shall tell. 

Enlisted in progressive thought, 

With Charity for all, 
We see the noblest Truths arise, — 

We see all Evils fall ! 

The plowshares of our richest soils 
Molded from sword and gun, — 

Head, heart and hand equipped complete 
With LOVE — the world is won. 



And 



BENEDICTION. 

Rev. William Salter, D. D. 

now may Almighty God, who 



brought our fathers over the sea that they 
might reclaim the wilderness and plant 
the homes of civilization upon these 
shores, bless this day's commemoration of 
their valor and piety to their children's 
children. 

Standing around the rock where Major 
Charles Frost suffered and died, we renew 
with one accord our devotion to the memo- 
ry of our fathers and to the God of our 
fathers, that He may be with us and with 
coming generations as He was with them, 
that glory may dwell in the land ; 

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the love of God, and the com- 
munion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 
Amen. 



The Exercises of the 200th Anniversary 
of the Massacre of Major CHARLES 
FROST were ended. As the assembly 
slowly drifted from the Rock, groups of 
interested descendants visited the quaint 
slab that covers the Hero's dust, and read : 

Here lyeth jnterred ye body 
of mj Charles Frost aged 
65 years Deed July ye 4th 
1697 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY AT STURGEON CREEK. 



ELIZABETH MEHITABLE BARTLETT. 
repaied .11 the request of the Eliot Histoiical Socii 



As we meet to commemorate the two 
hundredth anniversary of the tragic death 
of Major Charles Frost, it is fitting that we 
review the varied achievements of his life, 
and the history of his father's settlement in 
the Province of Mayne. 

Nicholas Frost, the father of Major 
Charles Frost, came from the town of Tiv- 
erton, in Devonshire, England, where he 
was born about 1585. His father's name 
was John, and his mother's name was Anna 
Hamden ; and he was one of six children, 
four of whom were boys. 

Nicholas married Bertha Cadwalla from 
Tavistock, in January, 1630, when he was 
forty-five years old. His bride was only 
twenty. 

It is believed that Nicholas and his wife 
and two sons, Charles (born July 30, 1631,) 
and John (born August 7, 1633,) sailed 
from Plimouth, Devon, in Aprill, 1634, in 
ye shipp Wulfrana, Alevin Wellborn, 
master, and arrived at Little Harbor in 
June of yt year. 

It is said that the bill of lading of his 
goods is among old papers in the ancient 
Pepperell house at Kittery Point. 

That Nicholas Frost was in this locality 
in 1634 or 1635, we know by a deposition of 
Phillip Swadden, who lived in a wigwam 
near the Pascataquacke River. His depos- 
lion taken in 1673, says that "thirty-eight 
or thirty-nine years since, living then at 
pishchataqua, I do positively knew yt Mr. 
Thomas Wannerton gave to Nicholas Frost 
a Prcell of Land up in Pischataqua River, 
now known by the name of Kittery, which 
pcell of Land was bounded, on the East 
with a little Cove, Joyneing to the Fort 
Poynt, on the South W^est on the River, on 
the North West Northerly with a great 



stumpe called the Mantill-tree stumpe ; 
which is about the middle of the Lane, well 
Joynes to ye Land which Major Nicholas 
Shapleigh now possesseth, & soe runneing 
into ye woods, as fare backe as the sayd 
Wannerton's Land went, which Tract of 
Land Mr. Thomas Wannerton gave to the 
sayd Nicholas Frost to come to bee his 
Neighbor." 

Capt. Thomas Wannerton had charge o( 
Mason and Gorges trading station in 1633, 
and lived in the Great House at Strawberry 
Bank until 1644. 

Nicholas Frost and his family seem to 
have tarried in that vicinity for a time, as 
his daughter Anna was born at Little Har- 
bor, April 17, 1635. 

Afterwards, it is said, Nicholas pur- 
chased four hundred acres of land on the 
North East side of Piscataqua river, and 
on that land built a small rude log house 
for his family. 

He began to lay the foundation of one of 
our town roads ; for we find that in 1637, 
" Mr. Alexander Shapleigh & Mr. James 
Treworgie did agree with the neighbors 
dwelling at and about vStnrgeon Creek, that 
there shculd be alwayes a highway from 
Nicholas ffrosts house down to Sturgeon 
Creek, and soe along to the ceaders " This 
was done because the "said ffrost desired of 
sd Shapleigh a way to be left from the sd 
creek to his house." 

In 1640 Nicholas Frost was appointed 
constable at Piscataqua, by the first General 
Court held in Saco by the Councillors of 
Sir Ferdinando Gorges. 

In 1640, it is said, Nicholas built a large 
two-story house of square hewn logs, that 
was known as the ffrost's Garrison. 

The York Deeds contain a record dated 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



35 



May, 1633, which says "when the marsh 
was divided, Mr. Alexander Shapleigh did 
find that Nicholas Frost had too litlle 
marsh for his stock of cattle, and therefore 
did freely give him the five acres of marsh 
allotted to him, the said Alexander Shap- 
leigh." 

A question seems to have arisen several 
years later, about the boundary line be- 
tween Mr. Alexander Shapleigh and Nicho • 
Frost; for John VVhitte, a former servant 
of Sh.ipleigh, testified in 1662, that he 
knew the bounds at Sturgeon Cricke med- 
dow that were set down by Mr. Taynter 
between Mr Alexander Shapleigh and 
Nicho: Frost, about 22 years since, and 
that to his best discerning the said bounds 
still remain. 

It is said that Nicholas Frost's two 
brothers came to New Engl ,nd about .640. 
One brother, John, owned and commanded 
a merchant or trading vessel, the Anna oj 
Devon, and he came over from England, 
bringing with him a younger brother' 
Charles, and an old friend of the family, 
Thomas Belcher. 

After some years Chailes returned to 
England. He is said to have presented a 
Bible to his nephew, Charles Frost, son of 
Nicholas. A family Bible printed in 1599, 
IS now in possession of William S. Frost of 
Allston, Mass. 

Thomas Belcher remained with the fam- 
ily of Nicholas, and died in 1632. Possibly 
U was Belcher's grandson who made a will 
in 1730, in which he gives all his property 
to Mr. Charles Frost, a grandson of Major 
Charles Frost. John Belcher, Joyner, for- 
merly of Boston, gives these reasons for 
making Charles Frost his heir: " Whereas 
I the said John Belcher, have lived at the 
house of Mr. Chailes Frost in Kittery, near 
about fourty years, and have been com- 
fortably supported and provided for, no 
Relations or other Persons whatsoever 
haveing done anything for my help or com- 
fort at any time since I have lived in the 
Eastern parts, but ye said Charles Frost 



and his father and Grandfather, and now 
in my old age and helpless condition, I am 
comfortably supported and provided for 
with convenient food and raiment and oth- 
er necessaryes of life, by ye said Charles 
Frost." 

This John Belcher, it is said, used to 
raise onion seeds to sell to the neighbors; 
and he always used a cocoanut shell to 
measure the seeds in. After his death 
there was great search made for his money, 
which was supposed to be hidden under a 
stone. Even after the old G.-rrison was 
pulled down, thirty years later, the tounda- 
tion stones were dug around and over- 
turned again and again, in vain attempts to 
discover the treasure. 

When Charles Frost was fifteen years old 
he accidentally killed a companion, War- 
wick Heard.-March 24, 1646. His story of 
the affair is m the Court Records of that 
time : 

"Charles Frost saveth that he beino- 
about his father's door, looking into the 
marsh, saw three geese light in the marsh 
ashethought, by a little puddle of water;' 
and he taking a piece ran down into the 
marsh to get a shot at them : and he coming 
there crept along on his belly. Warwick 
Heard seeing the same three gee.se light 
and being crept into the bush and long 
grass before him, he not knowing him to be 
there, and it being after sun.set,— Warwick 
Heard being upon his knees ready to give 
fire, and the wind blowing the skirts of his 
jacket abroad, Charles Frost lifting up his 
head, as he was creeping, thought it to be 
a goose picking herself, presently gave fire, 
and so shot him." 



He was taken before the Coroner's Jury 
who gave their verdict that Charles Frost 
was not guilty of wilfnll murder of War- 
wick Heard ; and the higher Court con- 
firmed the verdict and discharged Charles 
F'rost. 

In 1649, Nicholas Frost with Capt. 



36 



NICHOLAS PROST AND HIS FAMILY 



Nicho ; Shapleigh and John Heard, served 
as "ye select Towns man" in the newly in- 
corporated town of Kittery. They were the 
first selectmen elected in Kittery. Again 
in 1651 we find him serving in the same 
capacity with Nicho : Shapleigh and An- 
thony Emery, — who was the first Emery at 
Sturgeon Creek. 

It is a family tradition that Nicholas 
Frost's vvife Bertha, and daughter Anna, 
were captured by the Indians on the night 
of July 4, 1650, and carried to an Indian 
camp near the mouth of Sturgeon Creek, 
during the absence of Nicholas and his 
son Charles. On their return from York, 
Nicholas and Charles went to the rescue of 
mother and daughter, but were unsuccess- 
ful ; Charles, however, killed two Indians, 
(a Chief and a Brave,) in his desperation. 
Calling a few of the other settlers, Charles 
and his father went back to the Indian 
camp next day but found it deserted, ex- 
cepting for the mangled bodies of Bertha 
and Anna, which they brought up and 
buried near the old Garrison. 

Kittery, in 1651, granted to Nicholas 
Frost 340 acres of land, "joining on the 
west to Anthony Emery's land, and on ye 
east side of ye land with a brook which 
runs into Agmenticus river, and on ye 
south to ye end of ye plains." Twenty acres 
more were granted to him in 1653. 

Both Nicholas Frost and his son Charles 
signed the papers of " Submission to the 
government of the Massachusetts Bay in 
New England," in 1652. On this occasion 
Nicholas Frost's mark was unusually bold. 
He combined N. F. in a simple monogram 
as his usual mark. 

Charles Frost was about twenty-one years 
old at this time ; and the town of Kittery 
granted to him, December 16, 1652, one 
hundred acres of land "at Tompson's point, 
of twenty-four Poles wide, & so running 
backward the same breadth over the Rocky 
Hills untill ye sd one hundred acres be 
accomplished." Twelve years later he 
cold one half of this land to the Oliver 



brothers, who were fishermen at the Isles 
of Shoals. 

During the year of his majority, Charles 
Frost was interested with others in plan- 
ning a Meeting House, said to be the one 
in the Parish of Unity, in which he attend- 
ed service for the last time on that fatal 
July day. This will be seen by the follow- 
ing copy of an old paper : 

" By this Courte & Authoritee Theroff : 
Holden ye ffourth daye of Maye, 1652, Att 
ye place called Franks Forte, For j'e chus- 
ing off ye fittest men for ye selection a Lott, 
& Building thereon a Meeting House. Itt 
is ordered — that Charles Frost, James Niral 
James Emery, Wm. Chadbourne, Icho : 
Plaisted, John Heard, Have ye athoritee to 
selecte a Lott yett undisposed & Build 
theron a Meeting House as they shalle 
judge meete for ye goode of ye Inhabitants. 

" It is ordered — That ye Meeting Hou.se 
shall be builded forthwith, Thirtie by 
fourtie foote & ye Timbers shalle be cutl, 
if yt can be found sutible. from ye Lott. 

Itt is ordered — That when j'e Courte 
have agreed uppon ye summ of Monye to 
bee Levyed uppon ye sevrall people within 
this Jurissdiction ytt a Comittee bee chusen 
to sett & apoynt W'ch shall bee ye propo- 
tion of every Man to Paye of ye sd Levye. — 
John Wincoll, Sec'y." 

In 1657 several of the inhabitants of the 
townes of Yorke, Kittery, Wells, Sacoe 
and Cape Porpus, sent a petition to Oliver 
Cromwell, Lord Protector of Eng. praying 
to be continued under the government of 
Massachusetts "which through God's mer- 
cy wee now Injoy to o'r good satisfaction." 
Nicholas Frost and his son Charles both 
sign this petition. The reasons for sending 
this petition are stated as follows : 

" Because wee feare ye hurtfullnesse of 
our changes, as o'r govermt now is, our 
prsons & Estate stand undr ye securitie of 
wholesome Lawes, watchfull Governors, ye 
fathers of our nourishment and peace, 
whose joyous care not only tollerates but 
mainlaines us ye pure Institutions, for ye 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



pure Institutions, for 3'e Incouragemt of 
godly psons both Ministrs and othrs, to 
reside amongst us, but changing it, may 
throw us back into our former Estate to 
live under negligent masters, ye dangr of a 
confused Annarchy, & such other incon- 
veniences as may make us a fitt shelter for 
ye worst men, delinquents & ill affected 
psons to make their recourse unto, thereby 
to exempt themselves from their justly de- 
served punishment." 

Charles Frost was a representative to the 
General Court of Massachusetts in 1658, 
and held the office for five years. The 
same year that he was elected, the General 
Court appointed his father, Nicholas Frost, 
with Nicho : Shapleigh & Bryan Pendleton 
"to pitch & lay out the de.iding 15'ne be- 
tweene the tovvnes of Yorke and Wells. 

Nicholas Frost died July 2cth, 1663, and 
was buried within the stockade of the old 
Garri-on. The Court divided his properly 
among his five children. Charles was given 
a double share "for his former care and 
trouble" of his father; and the homestead 
and five hundred acres of land fell to his 
share. It included the great hill now 
known as Frost's Hill, and a portion of this 
land has remained in the family. 

The inventory of Nicholas Frost's estate 
includes 1042 acres of land, 27 head of cat- 
tle, [9 hogs, 4 horses, and one servant boy, 
7 1-4 years old ; stores of grain, farming im- 
plements, tools, and house furnishings. 
Charles Frost was administrator, and his 
bond was ^1000. 

Charles Frost's brothers were John ; and 
Nicholas who was about sixteen years old 
when his father died. His sisters were 
Catherine, who married William Leighton, 
and after his death married Joseph Ham- 
mond, Register of Deeds and Judge of Pro- 
bate ; and Elizabeth who married William 
Gowine, alias Smyth. 

After the death of his father, Nicholas 
chose his brother Charles to be his guar- 
dian, "untill lie come to twenty one years 
of a^e ; so alsoe of his portion, amounting 



to ye valew of one hundred pounds; thyrty 
pounds wrof is in Lands, & tenn pounds he 
already hath received by accept of schooel- 
ing, cloathing & otherwise." 

Charles gives a bond of two hundred 
pounds, and agrees "to pay or cause to be 
payd in due pportion after the rate of six 
pounds p hundren, yearely, & yeare by 
yeare, for the Intrest of ye sum of sixty 
pounds, unto my sd brother Nicholas, in 
merchandable dry Codd fish, or provissions 
at Current prices, at or before the last day 
of Octobr, yearely, being about four yeares 
and six months from the date thereof. He 
also agrees to re-deli\er the possession of 
the Lands and the sixty pounds to his 
brother Nicholas when he becomes of age. 
Charles Frost signed this bond the 5 day of 
March, 1663-4. 

I find nil indenture, dated 25th of March, 
1662, "Citty of Bristol!," and witnessed by 
the Mayor, by which one Nicholas Frost 
binds himself to Thomas Orchard "from the 
day of the date hereof, untill his 
first and next arival at New England. & 
after, for & during the term of five years to 
serve in such service & imploymt as hee 
the sd Thomas Orchard, or his assigns 
shall there imploy him according to the 
costome of the Couiitrey In the like kind. 
In consideration wrof the said Thomas doth 
hereby covenant & grant to & with the sd 
Nicholas to pay for his passage, to find & 
allow him meat, drink, apparell, & Lodg- 
ing, with other necessarys, dureiug said 
term." At the end "to pay accorddmg to 
the costome of the country." 

In July 1663, Thomas Orchard assigns 
Nicho : Frost over to serve William Scad- 
locke for four years. Scadlocke lived on 
the west side of Sacoe River near its 
mouth. 

Scadlocke, with the consent of Nicholas 
Frost, assigned him to Francis Litllefejid 
the Elder, who lived in Wells, next to 
Joseph Bolles, and was a "Planter," or 
"husbandman;" and was part owner in a 



FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



saw mill and come mill at Webhanett falls. 
Littlefejld had an apprentice at the same 
time, who was to serve for eight years, 
receiving board and clothes, and at the end 
of his term to have "two sujts of apparell 
& a mayre cowlt." 

It has been said that this Nicholas Frost 
was Charles Frost's younger brother. — 
Dates and other facts contradict it. 

There is a tradition that the young 
Nicholas of our stor}' made several voyages 
to and from England and America with his 
uncle, Capt. John Frost, on the Anna of 
Devon, and when Capt. John became feeble, 
he gave Nicholas an interest in, and the 
command of his vessel. He continued his 
voyages until his death. We find this copy 
of his last letter to his brother Charles 
Frost ; 

From Patoxon in Mary Land 
Aprill : 2S : 1673 : 
Loueing brother Charles : 

My kind loue to you & your wife & little 
ones; trusting in almighty these lynes will 
find you in health, as I my selfe am at 
present, & have been ever since my depart- 
ure from you, thankes bee to god, for his 
presrving mercy therein ; I have sent you 
foure letters before thi, & could not as yet 
understand whither you have any one of 
them. I doe wonder at it. I was doubt- 
full you had all bee dead, or your Rivers 
frozen up, that you could not come * * * 
put a letter on board wn soe many oper- 
tunitys have prsented, or yt you had forgot- 
ten m. I have sent you by Christopher 
Addams, two Rowls of Toba : weighing 
about sixty pounds, wch If come to your 
hands, I pray you disposs of for money. I 
did send you some by Mr. Be - ter, & 
thought to have sent more, but have other 
wise ordered It. Wee are ready to sayle 
&. have been Laden this 10: days, but our 
Mrchant hath not finished his bussiness ; 
Wee are informed of some dutch Privaters 
yt are upon this Cost ; I wis they may not 



Cause us to goe to some port Contrary to 
our orders. 

I pray you present my scervice to Mr. 
Vaughan, & my love to all my relations as 
well in Boston as with you : soe hopeing 
to see you in due tyme, I committ you to 
ye protection of god, & remajne your loue- 
brothertill death. 

I doe 'request you in case of Mortality, 
that I never return home, that all you have 
in your hands as Well Lands as other es- 
tate, bee devided aequally betwen yor chil- 
dren & brother Leightons, when of age, 
wch is desired by your bro'r, 

Nicholas Fkost. 

That same year, — August i, 1673, — Nich- 
olas died in Limrick, Irehnid, but his' 
property was divided by the Court equally 
between his two brothers and sisters. 

Mr. Vaughan, mentioned in the letter, 
was son-in-law to Mr. Robert Eliot; and 
the relatives in Boston were probably his 
brother John's family. John Frost, "mari- 
nor of Boston," was dead in 1687. His 
widow's name was Mary, and his children 
were Charles, Mehitable, Elizabeth and 
Mary. Mary Frost, widow of "Capt. John 
Frost, late of Boston, in ye county of Suf- 
folk, Marinor," sold 340 acres of land in 
Kittery, in 1705; and the land is described 
as being that granted to Nicholas Frost, 
father of the sd John Frost, by the select- 
men of Kittery, in 1651, and a small lot 
granted in 1653. 

Other Frost families had .settled in this 
section early. We find George Frost in 
Cascoe in 1637. 

John Frost, fisherman, of the Isles of 
Shoals, was the son of John who owned 
land at Bricksome ; and sold a tract of 
land in York near the harbor's mouth in 
1674; in 1678 he was dead, leaving a widow 
Rose Frost, and daughter Annas Maxell, 
and two sons, Phillip an J J> hn of the Isles 
of ^^hoals. 

William Frost was at Winter Harbor 1675. 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



In 1675, — two years after the death of 
Nicholas Frost, jr., and twelve years after 
Nicholas Frost, senior, died, we find a 
Nijhol.is Frost at Kittery, buying 100 acres 
of land of Abra : Conley, and 60 acres of 
John Criford. The 60 acres he sold at 
once to George Breu^hton; and the deed 
of s.ile shows the mark of Nicholas Frost 
and his wife Mary. And his mark is ver}' 
unlike the mark of our Nicholas Frost. His 
wife Mary was iwenty-one years of age ; 
and was tht- sisttr of Edward Sniale. This 
may h ivc been the Nicholas Frost who was 
tried lur ilKft at the Court held in Yorke in 
1690, and who brought disgrace on his 
name at many other times. 

.\t tlf- Point of Graves in Portsmouth, is 
a slotie bearing the name of Elizabeth 
Frost, and the date 1696. 

A few years after the death of his father, 
Ch.irles Frost was appointed Captain of 
the militia in Kilter}'. The date of his ap- 
pointment was Jul}' 6, 1668. 

In 1669, he was one of the three Rep- 
resentatives from Yorkshire to the General 
Ciurt held in Boston. 

In 1671 he was Town Clerk of Kittery. 

In 1672, we find Capt. Charles buying 
ten acies of sault marsh of Joseph Holies of 
Wells, who was the Town Clerk and a 
prominent man ; and three years later. — 
Dec. 27, 1675. — he married Joseph Bolles' 
daughter Mary. At the time of his mar- 
riage Charles was forty-four years old and 
Mary Bolles was thirty-three. 

In 1675 King Philip's war began ; and 
Capt. Charles Frost had charge of the 
garrisons at Sturgeon Creek. The Indians 
attacked Durham, Newichewanack and 
Salmon Falls, and several of the settlers 
were killed in each place ; among them 
Capt. Frost's lieutenant, Roger Plaisted. 

Capt Frobt in the following letter re- 
ceived permission to garrison his house : 

Capt. Frost and Sergent Neall, 

Gentlemen : I thought to have meet 



with you here at maior Shaply's but ender- 
standing the guns were herd about Star- 
geon Creek, it is well you tooke your march 
as you did — my dasier and order is that you 
garrison your owne house with ten men, 
and doe your beste now the snow is upon 
the grond, which will be Advantage upon 
ther tracks. Your letter I reseved about 
garrisoning your house. We have a party 
of men upon your side, commanded by 
goodman banmoie ; and John Wingut and 
Joseph Fild are going out this night : and 
in case you want men, goe to the garrison 
above, and especially Samon faull, and 
take men for any expedition : and all the 
comanders of the garrisons are hereby re- 
quired to Atand your order herein, and this 
shall be your suficant warrent. 
dated this 8 nomber, 1675, about 3 o'clock. 
Your Servant, Richard Waldron 

Sergent maior 
I intend god willing to be at nachwan- 
ack to morrow moining, therfor would da- 
sier to her from you. R: W : 

It was in September of the next year, 
1676, that Major Waldron and Capt. Frost 
received orders to kill all hostile Indians. 
Two companies were sent from Boston with 
the same orders ; and they came to Dover 
on their way to Maine. There they found 
four hundred Indians assembled at the gar- 
rison o( Maj. Waldron, with whom they had 
made peace at the death of King Philip, 
one month before. The Boston companies 
were for attacking them at once ; but Wal- 
dron wanted to take them by stratagem. 
He proposed to the Indians to have a sham 
fight ; and then he sent orders for Captain 
Frost to bring his company from Piscataqua. 
Waldron and Frost with their men, and the 
troops from Boston formed one party ; and 
the unsuspecting Indians another. The 
Indians were induced to fire the first volley, 
when the whites surrounded and disarmed 
them, and took them all prisoners. Those 
who were known to be friendly il.iy dis- 
missed. About three hundred strange In- 



diaus from the south and west were sent to 
Boston ; seven or eight of these were known 
to be murderers, and they were hanged. 
The rest were sold in to foreign slavery! 

Two days after this "base Yankee trick," 
as the Indians rightly called it, Capt. Frost 
and his men proceeded to Ossipee. Triis- 
trum Harris was one of the company. On 
the way he told Francis Smale that in case 
he should fall by the hand of the enemy, or 
howsoever his end should come, he intend- 
ed his estate for the children of Captain 
Frost's sister Elisabeth, who married Wil- 
liam Gowen alias Smyth. He told the 
same to John Tomson, another member of 
the company. Shortly after this Harris 
was killed by the Indians, and his property 
divided among the Gowen-Smyth children. 

In 1677, Waldron and Frost with 150 
men, sailed from Boston to Brunswick and 
the mouth of the Kennebec. They held 
parley with the Indians in both places, and 
rescued three captives. They killed Indians 
and captured five ; and returned to Boston 
without losing a man. 

To appreciate the duties devolving on 
Capt. Frost at this time, we must read the 
following instructions from the Major Gen- 
eral, — Daniel Denison, of Ipswich, Mass., 
-April 12, 1677 : 

Instructions for Capt. Charles Frost : 

You must take notice that the party of 
soldiers now sent you are designed chiefly 
for the defense of Yorkshire & the dwell- 
ings on the upper parts of Pascatay. You 
are therefore, piincipally so to improve 
them, by your constant marches about the 
borders of Wells, Yorke, Nochiwannick, 
Cocheco, Exeter, Haveril, &c., as you 
shall have intelligence of the enemies' mo- 
tion, whom you are upon every opportunity 
without delay to persue & endeavor to 
take Captive, kill and destroy. 

Having notice of any partie of the enemy 
at any fi.shing place or other rendezvous, 
you shall lay hold on such opportunity to 
assault the enemv. 



If you shall understand the enemy to be 
too numerous for your smal partie, you shal 
advise with Major Walderne, and desire 
his assistance to furnish you with a gnattr 
force for a present service, but if you judg 
the opportunity or advantage may be hst 
by such delay, you shall for a present ser- 
vice require the inhabitants or garrison 
souldiers of the place where you are, or so 
many as may be necessary for you & s:,fe 
for the place, immediately to attend you 
upon such present service for destroying 
the enemy. 

In all your motions & marches, silence 
and speed will be your advantage & se- 
curity. 

You must supply your present wants 'f 
victuals & amunition for your snuldiei s cut 
of the towiies and places where you come, 
especially from Portsmouth, to wh' m I 
have writt for that end, & if a larger Mip- 
ply be wanting, you shall give notici lhe;e 
of to myself or the Govtnour & Counstl. 

The necessity & distress of those parts, 
& confidence of your courage & indu-try, 
doe require your utmost activity in the 
management of this business, without 
spending needeless expensive delayes. Up 
and be doing ; & the Lord prosper your 
endeavors. 

You shall from time to time give intelli- 
gence of all occurences of moment, to Major 
Walderne and my selfe, and as much as 
may be without prejudice of the service, 
advise with Major Walderne and the Gen- 
tlemen of Portsmouth, upon whom you 
must principally depend for your present 
supplyes. 

In 1678, Charles Frost represented Maine 
in the General Court at Boston. While 
attending faithfully to his military and po- 
litical duties, he still found time to attend 
to his own affairs, and sold land, and often 
served ss appraiser of property, or to settle 
estates. On one occasion he was chosen 
with John Wincoll, James Emery and Wil- 
liam Govi'en alias vSmyth, to settle a 'con- 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



troversy usually ariseing betwen William 
Furbush and Mary Forgisson, touching 
the dividing lyne of thejr home Lotts." 

In 1683, Charles Frost, Francis Cham- 
pernown and Francis Hooke, settled an es- 
tate in Saco. 

In 1665, Charles Frost was appointed by 
the Governor of Massachusetts, one of 
President Danforth's Council of the Prov- 
ince of Maine, for a term of six years. 
These Councillors were also the Judges of 
a Supreme Court, and Magistratef through- 
out the province. 

The Indian Wat known as King Wil- 
liam's broke out in 1689, and Capt. 
Charles Frost was appointed the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the military forces of 
Maine. The date of his commission is 
August 23, 1689. 

From this time Major Frost was actively 
engaged in military service. Knowing that 
his life was in peril at all times, he made 
his will in 1691. in which he disposed of 
his large estate to his wife and children :^ 
Mary, Charles, John, Nicholas, Sarah 
Shipway, Abigail ffryer, Lidia, Elizabeth, 
and Mehitable. 

His three negroes, " Tony," 'Esq.," and 
" Prince," he gave to his three sons. 

The next year, 1692, the Indians led by 
Canadian Frenchmen, descended on York, 
and killed and carried captive over one 
hundred and fifty of the settltrs, and 
burned nearly all the houses. Doubtless 
Sturgeon Cretk would have had a like vis- 
itation, had not Majcr Frost kept his sol- 
diers const. intl\ on the alert, watching for 
the approach of Indian spies. Even then, 
some of our settlers were killed, perhaps 
when the Maj )r had gone with his soldiers 
to the relief of other settlements. We quote 
the following from a letter written by 
Ichabod Plais'ed, and dated June 9, 1693: 

" Last night we had four persons carried 
away from the garrison by the Indians, and 
one wounded. The place was at Sturgeon 
Creek. And those carried away were Nich- 
olas Frost's wife and two children and the 



widow Smith." 

It would seem that Nicholas Frost, jr., 
had no wife, from the fact that he wanted 
his property divided between the children 
of his brother, Major Charles, and the 
children of his si.ster, Catharine Leighton, 
as he requested in the letter written shortly 
before he died. Therefore this captive may 
have been the wife of the stranger Nicholas 
who bought land at Sturgeon Creek in 1675. 
Major Charles' youngest son, Nicholas, 
was a mere child at this time, as his eldest 
brother Charles was born in 1678, and his 
brother John and one of his sisters were 
older than Nicholas. 

Major Frost's daughter Mary was mar- 
ried in 1694 to Capt. John Hill, who was 
then in command of Fort Mary, at Winter 
Harbor, or Saco. He previously had charge 
of the building of the Fort, which he named 
in honor of Mary Frost. 

In 1694, Major Frost built a saw mill 
with James Emery, jr., and Noah Enie.ry, 
on York pond brook, — on the land of James 
Emery, senior. 

Major Frost was elected a member of the 
Governor's Council, in 1693 ; and from 1680 
to the time of his death in 1697, (with the 
possible exceptions of 1687-88,) we find 
records of his frequent work as a Justice of 
the Peace. 

From 1689 we find him with his associate 
Justices, four times each year holding "His 
Majesties Court of Quarter Sessions," at 
York and Wells. Some of the business 
brought before this Court, is of interest to 
us, when we remember that it occupied 
Major Frost's mind : At the October ses- 
sion in 1691 : 

" It is ordered that there be a Day of pub- 
lick thanksgiving kept on the 5th Day of 
Novenber next, & all servile worke on that 
Day is hereby prohibited." 

" Days of Sollemn fasting and prayer," 
were also appointed. 

In 1692, the Court ordered a ferry to be 
kept by John Woodman from Withers point 
to Strawbery banke, and he was to keep a 



42 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



sufficient boate or Gundelo for horse and 
man. 

In October, 1696, the Court ordered a 
bridge to be built within six weeks over 
Sturgeon Creek. 

A letter written from fforte Loyall, Fal- 
mouth, in September, 1696, states that 
" Major Swaine with Major ffrost & Major 
Swaines Life Gard, came to this Towne, 
23th of this Instant, whare the 2 Comanders 
had a very Loving Corrispondency to 
Geather, & Conference to order matters for 
the defence of the Country." 

Honoored Charles Frost was present at 
the January and April Sessions of Court, 
1697, presiding with his associate Justices. 
Then his name drops from the records. 

He met his death Sunday, July 4, 1697. 
He was returning from the Meeting House 
in the Parish of Unity, where he had at- 
tended service with his two sons and sever- 
al neighbors. Within a mile of his Gar- 
rison House, the party were fired upon by 
Indians who had made an ambush near the 
great Rock by the roadside. 

Major Frost was killed. His sons Charles 
and John escaped. 

Dennis Downing, the blacksmith, was 
killed. 

The wife of John Heard was mortally 
wounded. Her husband tried to put her on 
the horse ; but she fell, and begged him to 
leave her and save their children at home. 
The savages chased him and shot his horse 
which fell under him when near his Gar- 
rison. He ran to its shelter and escaped 
his pursuers. 

The letter written by Joseph Storer of 
Wells to Capt. John Hill gives an account 
of the death of Major Frost, and the funeral 
which he attended. 

The night following the burial, the In- 
dians opened the grave, took the body and 
carried it to the top of Frost's Hill, sus- 
pended it on a stake, — piercing the body. 
The place where this savage act was com- 
mitted, was the highest point, where the 



fence now crosses the western side of the 
hill. Elderly people remember a very 
large old pine tree, which stood just across 
the fence, near the supposed spot. Early 
the next morning the Indians were heard 
making most hideous noises on the hill. 
Charles, (then about nineteen years old,) 
went out to ascertain the cause, and dis- 
covered that the body had been disinterred. 
A few men hastily gotten together recov- 
ered it, and a guard was kept over the 
grave until a large flat stone was laid upon 
it. The Indians feared this was a trap for 
them, and troubled it no more. 

Tradition says the stone was brought 
from York woods some years before on a 
dragg; and was intended to be used as a 
door step at the old Garrison. It was nearly 
twice its present size, being a flat irregular 
stone of a peculiar formation. Some ye^irs 
after the Major's death, t'.ie stons was 
cut into its present shape, and lettered by a 
Welch man from Portsmouth : 

HERE lyeth Jnterrd ye body 

of mj. Charles Frost aged 

65 years Deed July ye 4th 
1697 

A line is cut around the stone, and in 
each corner is a clearly chiseled fleur de lis. 
Near by is the gravestone of the Major's 
grandson, Eliot Frost, and other members 
of the family. And all about are unmarked 
and unknown graves. 

The site of the old Garrison can still be 
seen quite a little distance down the hill 
from the burying ground. Crossing the 
highway, we go down into the middle of a 
field, where the land slopes abruptly to the 
marsh. On this spot stood the old Gar- 
rison House, which was razed to the ground 
in 1760, after standing one hundred and 
twenty years. The old cellar was then used 
as a dumping ground for all loose materials 
about the field. A great many years later, 
this field was plowed ; and much to the 
surprise of all, there came up a beautiful 



NICHOLAS FROST AND HIS FAMILY 



43 



crop of tobacco all around the edge of the 
old cellar. Wild parsnips used to grow 
there; and every spring an old asparagus 
root sends up its shoots close by. Whose 
hand planted it we may not know. 

This part of the field was plowed again 
several years later, and a spoon was found 
where the garrison stood. It has a mark in 
the bowl, and on the mark are three tiny 
spoons, with the word Dovde above. The 
handle is straight with an ornamented end. 

A gold ring was found there about the 
same time. It has a round raised piece on 
the back ; and on it is a heart with a crown 
above it, and the letter L at one side. 

Another relic found there, is the side of a 
bottle with the name, "Sir William Pep- 
pen 11" blown into the glass. Maj. Frost's 
son John married Sir William Pepperell's 
sister Mary His son Charles married Jane 
Eliot Pepperell, a sister-in-law of Sir. 
William. The Major's grandson Charles, 
married Sarah Pepperell, a neice of Sir 
William. It does not seem strange, there- 
fore, that the glass relic was found there. 

Major Charles Frost's son Charles dated 
his will the 24 day of September in the 
Eleventh Year of his Majts Reign, anno 
Dom 1724, — a document so complete that it 
is almost a biography of himself,— and, 
among other silver treasures, he Gave the 
Church in Berwick "My Small Silver 
Tankerd." 

The old Garrison house was vacated in 
1756, when the Frost family then living in 
it, moved into a new house near the bury- 
ing ground. That house, too, has disap- 
peared. Generation after generation of the 
Fronts have gone to their long home; but 
"the little brook by Nicholas Frost's 
house," still runs on its way through the 
marshes, as it did on that sad Sunday eve- 
ning,— July 4, 1697. 



NICHOLAS FROST'S ESTATE. 

NATHAN GOOLD. 

An inventory of the goods, lands. Cattle 
& chatties with yr appurtenances, given p. 
Nicholas Frost late of Kittery, deseased, 
unto his Children, as by his deeds of gyft, 
bearing date ye 12th day of Sept. 1650 : 

Imps his wearing apj'arell 15 06 00 

A homestall of dwelling house, 
barne & other outhouses, orchards 
Cornfields, meddows & Pastures 
adjoining, Contayneing in all 
300 acres more or less att 205 

A former grant of Land of three 
hundred acers frome ye proprie- 
tors agent, Joyneing to his home 
land, viddzt. Mr. Roger Gard 18 

The long Marsh, by estimate Tenn 
acers, & the grants of Land be- 
longing to itt. Three hundred 
acres more or less 60 

Two acers & an halfe of sault 
Marsh In York bounds 5 

The house & Land at Kittery, 
Joyneing to Willia. Leighton, by 
estimation 30 acers 20 

A grant of one hundred acers of 
Land on the South side of 
Sturgeon Cricke jo 

One hodged of Wheate one Hodged 
of Mault -J 

7 aceis & 1-2 sorred with Inglish 
grasse j^ 

Pease and oates at Kittery i 16 00 

Indean Corne & fruite on ye ground 6 
Corne & oates up in ye Chamber i 
Hay at home & Abroad 16 

6 Oxen att ^^ 

7 Cows att 32 
Horses and Mayres in ye Woods 

one ould Mayre att 10 
one Mayre Cowlt at two years 1-2 

ould ,0 

I Horse 2 years 1-2 ould 7 

one Cowlt of one yeare & 1-2 ould 6 



[over] 



491 II 00 



FROST AXD HIS FAMILY 



Cattle ill the Woods 
One Cowe i Heffer one Calfe 9 

;, Heffers 3 Stears i bull 18 

one steare i bull 3 yeares 1-2 ould 10 
oue Steare of 4 years ould 7 

An ould Ox att 7 

1 1 ould swine att 12 

2 Sows 2 
Three shoatts and 3 piggs 2 
Two ould Carts, one peyre wheels 

I slead, Copp Irons & roape, att 2 
Three plows & ould Hodgeds i 

3 yoakes, 3chaynes, i wheelbarrow i 
I Tymber Chasse, i harrow & 
lumber 2 
3 beetles, 5 Wedges, i ould Hatchett 
& five axes at 00 
3 Hows, 2 Spades, one Shovell 

I Iron Crow, 5 forke tynes, ould 

Rakes 

I Dungforke, i Cross cutt saw, 

1 mattacke, 2 playnes att 

In the Kitchen 
one muskett, i fowling piece & rest 2 

2 Iron potts, I Iron Kettle, 

2 pott hookes att 4 

3 brass Kettles, skellett & 

I bayson att 3 

Two andirons, one Tramell & 

one peyr of Tonges 

one frying pann, i grid iron, 

I spilt, I flesh forke 

3 Tynn pudding panns, 11 Wooden 

trayes, Laddies, i scemmer, 

one Lampe, all att 

I wooden morter & pestell, 3 payles 

I Curry Come, 12 Trenchers & lumbe 

Working Towles 
I mortessing axe, 2 adges 

3 mayson's Hamers att 

4 augers, 3 Chissells, 3 Gowges, 
one square all att 



14 




10 


06 


GO 


00 


6 


00 


15 


GO 



G7 06 
7 6 



In the Inner Chamber 
I bedsteade, i feather bedd & 
bowlster, 2 pillows, one blankett 
I peyr sheets, I Rugg & i Coverlidd 9 11 go 
One Trundle bedstead & 
feather bedd & feather 
bowlster & pillow 5 

I peyre sheetes, 1 blankett & Rugg i 
I Chest, I ould blankett and 4 yds 
of blanketting i 11 00 

Two blanketts and Thread 14 

A remnant of Canvice i 

I Chest, 2 ould Chests 13 

I peyer of Compasses, i peyer of 
sheers, i Hammer 
I Table, i frame, i Chayre 

5 pewter dishes and 10 small peeces 
of pewter all att 
9 pewter spcones, 3 Oceamy spoones 

1 Tinn drippine pann, i brish & 
one Runlett all att 
Prickers, Compasses and Lumber 
Two peyres of sheetes i 

2 bowlsters Cases, i pyr f>f sheeti s 
2 peyre of Dimitty sheetes 2 
4 pillow bearers att 4 
12 napkines, i Table Cloath 14 

6 Course Napkines, i Table Cloath 
1 VV c.rm.'iii- pann att 



7 06 

5 

15 CO 
6 

3 

7 
05 00 
13 



15 
3 06 



2 files, one Wrest, i Hamer, one 
fore playne all att 



In ye upper Chamber 
2 Corne sives, 3 Meale sives 
8 Sackes at 4GS, i bedsteade, 
I Canvas bed, i feather bowlster, 

1 ould blankett, i ould rugg 20s 

2 saws i6s, 5 syths, 3 seads and 
Tackeling att 15 

8 reape hookes, 4 Howpes att 

3 bushs of ground Mault att 
3 bushs of wheate Meale & i 
bushel of Indian Meale 

1 Winnowing sheete, i pecke, i 
saddle ould one wth a bridle 
3 Tubbes & Some Lumber 
3 pecks of Saull & some hopps 



26 03 00 
00 06 00 



L«rc. 



1--ROST AND HIS FAMi 



45 



In the Cellar 
One Chyrne, 2 Keelers 
A Milke Ceene 2 Kellers 

2 beere barrells & some sope 
7 yds 1-2 of Course Cayrsey 

3 blanketts i pillow case 



trator was /'looo. The addition of the 
figures in the above inventory make the 
estate to value £6j^o 15 7. 



In the Darie 
30 younds of butter att 
17 Cheeses att 

4 Cheese fatts & covers & 30 
Trayes att • 

5 earthern panns 6 earthern potts 
4 small earthern vessells 
I peyre of scyles bjC, 2 weights 
Tallow Candles & Sugar 
one Cheese presse att 8 

In Silver 14 13 07 

A servant boy 7 years 3-4 14 00 00 

36 14 7 
Debt due to the Estate p. book 
or bill 81 2 o 

The Estate is Dr. to severall prsons 

In the whole 24 1 1 6 

p : Edw. Risworth 
Roger Playsteade 
John WincoU Apprizers. 
Charles Frost doth attest upon oath be- 
fore this Court yt this Inventory above 
written is a true Accopt of those particular 
goods, Lands & Chattels left by his lather 
Nici: Frost, lately diseased well hee, ye sd 
Charles gave unto ye apprizers. Taken 
this 3d of Uctobr, '63 

p : Edw. Richworth, Assotiate. 
The Court was held at Wells, Sept. 29, 
1663, and^CharlfcS Frost's bond as adminis- 



THE CLOSE OF THE DAY. 

We bring this series of Commemorative 
Papers to an end with the Letter and the 
Poem of Mr. George W. Frosst of Wash- 
ington, D. C, — written in anticipation of 
this day and its exercises. The Letter is 
addressed to his relative, Mr. Howard 
Furbish: 

June 30, 1897. 
Dear Cousin Howard : It would be im- 
possible for you to know, or even think, 
how much I regret that my health will not 
permit me to mingle with the good people 
of Old Eliot, at the Commemoration, 
to be held near the old Homestead, — 
July 4, 1S97. 

When it was announced that the Eliot 
Historical Society, and other interested 
parties, would observe the Two Hundredth 
Anniversary of the Massacre of Major 
CHARLES FROST, I indulged the hope 
that it was possible for me to be present. 

.AS i ai.i the oldest living member of the 
Frost family who inherited the original 
Home-read, I had a great desire to v^itness 
the honor to be given to his memory. 

Since it will be impossible for me to meet 
my "kith and kin," I .send best wishes for 
the great and interesting Day, and the 
accompanying Lines, which the occasion 
has suggested : — 



Two Centuries Numbered with the Brave.' 



GEORGE W. FROSST. 

As I aspire in this rude song of mine. 

To make his name in greater lustre shine, 

And though his dust lies slumbering^ in the grave, 

He left a name unstained, heroic, brave ; 

A name which echoes through the tented past 

Like sound of charge, rung in a bugle's blast. 



By heaven 'tis often given to the great, 

To find their day of fame the hour of fate ; 

So with the Father of old Eliots sons and daughters, 

Who walked with Death near Old Piscataqua's waters, 

Which still will bear his glory on the tide, 

Till in Eternity their waves subside. 

Fate full of heaven! its mercy and its power,— 

Man made immortal in his mortal hour, — 

So Major Charles with thee; the hour that wrought 

Thy fame, thy footsteps to the grave hath brought : 

The same thy closing and thy opening scene, 

But, Oh ! with many a sad, sad year between. 

Thus fate pursued the paths marked out by Fame 

With laggard speed and with misguided aim, 

Till Glory's courses thou hadst gone around, 

And Fate o'erlooked thee where first fame had found ; 

But not until the cycle thou hadst run 

Of all Old Eliot's warriors known beneath the sun. 

And endless thus as the Creator's span, 

Must be the memory of this noble man 

Whose name a calm and steady radiance throws 

On Eliot's early history, like the sun's repose ; 

Two centuries has he slumbered in the grave. 

Two centuries he's been numbered with the Brave ! 

Had I the power I well might pause to scan 
The varied years of this heroic man ; 
Might follow through his strange heroic life, 
Where oft was seen the Indians bloody knife ; 
.\nd tell how fields were stained in this fair clime, 
By blood and tears, rapacity and crime. 

Where the wild Indian dance or war-whoop rose, 
The scene is now of plenty and repose ; 
The quiver of the Indian race is empty now, 
His bow lies broken underneath the plow ; 
And where the wheat fields rustle in the gale. 
The vanished Indian scarcely leaves a trail. 



■My 'II 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 983 532 3 



